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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

PRESENTED  BY 

PROF.  CHARLES  A.  KOFOID  AND 

MRS.  PRUDENCE  W.  KOFOID 


4 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

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littp://www.arcliive.org/details/bodymindinquiryiOOmaudricli 


BODY  AND  MIND: 


AN  INQUIRY  INTO   THEIR  CONNECTION  AND  MUTUAL 

INFLUENCE,  SPECIALLY  IN  REFERENCE 

TO  MENTAL  DISORDERS. 


GTJLSTONIAN  LECTURES  FOR  18T0, 


DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  BOTAL  COLLEGE  OF  PHTSICIANS. 


WITH  APPENDIX. 


HENRY  MAUDSLEY,  M.  D.,  Lond., 

FELLOW  OF  THE   ROYAL  COLLEGE   OF  PHYSICIANS  ; 

PKOFESSOR   OF  MEDICAL   JURISPRUDENCE    IN   UNIVERSITY   COLLEGE,  LONDON  ; 

PRESIDENT-ELECT  OF  THE   MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL    ASSOCIATION  ; 

HONORARY   MEMBER   OF  THE   MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL   SOCIETY    OF  PARIS, 

OF  THE   IMPERIAL   SOCIETY   OF  PHYSICIANS   OF   VIENNA,  AND    OF  THE   SOCIETY   FOR   THK 

PROMOTION    OF  PSYCHIATRY   AND   FORENSIC   PSYCHOLOGY  OF  VIENNA, 
FORMERLY   RESIDENT  PHYSICIAN   OF  THK    MANCHESTER   ROYAL   LUNATIC  HOSPITAL,  ETC. 


NEW    YORK : 
r>.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY, 

90,  92    &   94   GEAND    STREET. 

1871. 


N--  IJ>  T     '  o  I 


PKEFACE 


The  three  lectures  forming  the  first  part  of  this 
volume  were  delivered  before  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians  of  London,  to  which  I  had  the  honor  of 
being  appointed  Gulstonian  Lecturer  for  this  year; 
the  latter  part  consists  of  two  articles  which,  having 
appeared  elsewhere,  are  reprinted  here  as  presenting  a 
completer  view  of  some  points  that  are  only  touched 
upon  in  the  lectures ;  and  the  general  plan  of  the 
whole,  as  thus  constituted,  may  be  described  as  being 
to  bring  man,  both  in  his  physical  and  mental  rela- 
tions, as  much  as  possible  within  the  scope  of  scientific 
inquiry. 

The  first  lecture  is  devoted  to  a  general  survey  of 
the  Physiology  of  Mind — to  an  exposition  of  the  phys- 
ical conditions  of  mental  function  in  health.  In  the 
second  lecture  are  sketched  the  features  of  some  forms 
of  degeneracy  of  mind,  as  exhibited  in  morbid  varieties 
of  the  human  kind,  with  the  purpose  of  bringing 
prominently   into   notice   the    operation   of  physical 


M31S904 


iv  PREFACE. 

causes  from  generation  to  generation,  and  the  rela- 
tionship of  mental  to  other  disorders  of  the  nervous 
system.  In  the  third  lecture,  which  contains  a  gen- 
eral survey  of  the  pathology  of  mind,  are  displayed 
the  relations  of  morbid  states  of  the  body  to  disor- 
dered mental  function.  I  would  fain  believe  the  gen- 
eral result  to  be  a  well-warranted  conclusion  that, 
whatever  theories  may  be  held  concerning  mind  and 
the  best  method  of  its  study,  it  is  vain  to  expect,  and 
a  folly  to  attempt,  to  rear  a  stable  fabric  of  mental 
science,  without  taking  faithful  account  of  physiologi- 
cal and  pathological  inquiries  into  its  phenomena. 

In  the  criticism  of  the  "  Limits  of  Philosophical 
Inquiry,"  which  follows  the  lectures,  will  be  found 
reasons  why  no  attempt  has  been  made  to  discuss  the 
bearing  of  the  views  broaclied  in  them  on  any  system 
of  philosophy.  Neither  materialism  nor  spiritualism 
are  scientific  terms,  and  one  need  have  no  concern 
with  them  in  a  scientific  inquiry,  which,  if  it  be  true 
to  its  spirit,  is  bound  to  have  regard  only  to  what  lies 
within  its  powers  and  to  the  truth  of  its  results.  It 
would  seem  to  be  full  time  that  vao^ue  and  barren 
disputations  concerning  materialism  and  spiritualism 
should  end,  and  that,  instead  of  continuing  such  fruit- 
less and  unprofitable  discussion,  men  should  apply 
themselves  diligently  to  discover,  by  direct  interroga- 
tion of  Nature,  how  much  matter  can  do  without  spir- 
itual help.     Let  each  investigator  pursue  the  method 


PREFACE.  V 

of  research  which  most  suits  the  bent  of  his  genius, 
and  here,  as  in  other  departments  of  science,  let  each 
system  be  judged  by  its  fruits,  which  cannot  fail  in 
the  end  to  be  the  best  G23onsors  and  sureties  for  its 
truth.  But  the  physiological  inquirer  into  mind  may, 
if  he  care  to  do  so,  justly  protest  against  the  easy  con- 
fidence with  which  some  metaphysical  psychologists 
disdain  physiological  inquiry,  and  ignore  its  results, 
without  ever  having  been  at  the  pains  to  make  them- 
selves acquainted  with  what  these  results  are,  and 
with  the  steps  by  which  they  have  been  reached.  Let 
theory  be  what  it  may,  there  can  be  no  just  question 
of  the  duty  of  observing  faithfully  all  the  instances 
which  mental  phenomena  offer  for  inductive  inquiry, 
and  of  striving  to  realize  the  entirely  new  aspect 
which  an  exact  study  of  the  physiology  of  the  nervous 
system  gives  to  many  problems  of  mental  science. 
One  reflection  cannot  fail  to  occur  forcibly  to  those 
who  have  pursued  this  study,  namely,  that  it  would 
have  been  well  could  the  physiological  inquirer,  after 
rising  step  by  step  from  the  investigation  of  life  in  its 
lowest  forms  to  that  of  its  highest  and  most  complex 
manifestations,  have  entered  upon  his  investigations 
of  mind  without  being  hampered  by  any  philosophi- 
cal theories  concerning  it.  The  very  terms  of  met- 
aphysical psychology  have,  instead  of  helping,  op- 
pressed and  hindered  him  to  an  extent  which  it  is  im- 
possible to  measure:  they  have  been   hobgoblins  to 


vi  PREFACE. 

frighten  him  from  entering  on  his  path  of  inquiry, 
phantoms  to  lead  him  astray  at  every  turn  after  he 
has  entered  upon  it,  deceivers  lurking  to  betray  him 
under  the  guise  of  seeming  friends  tendering  help. 
Let  him  take  all  the  pains  in  the  world,  he  cannot  ex- 
press adequately  and  exactly  what  he  would — neither 
more  nor  less — ^for  he  must  use  words  which  have  al- 
ready meanings  of  a  metaphysical  kind  attached  to 
them,  and  which,  when  used,  are  therefore  for  him 
more  or  less  a  misinterpretation.  He  is  thus  forced 
into  an  apparent  encroachment  on  questions  which  he 
does  not  in  the  least  degree  wish  to  meddle  with,  and 
provokes  an  antagonism  without  ever  designing  it; 
and  so  one  cannot  but  think  it  would  have  been  well 
if  he  could  have  had  his  own  words  exactly  fitting  his 
facts,  and  free  from  the  vagueness  and  ambiguity  of  a 
former  metaphysical  use. 

The  article  on  the  "  Theory  of  Vitality,"  which  ap- 
peared in  1863,  is  now  reprinted,  with  a  few,  mainly 
verbal,  alterations.  The  aspect  of  some  of  the  ques- 
tions discussed  in  it  has  been  somewhat  changed  by 
the  progress  of  inquiry  and  thought  since  that  time, 
but  it  appears  to  the  Author  that,  great  as  discussion 
has  been,  there  are  yet  considerations  respecting  vitali- 
ty that  have  not  been  duly  weighed.  Whether  living 
matter  was  formed  originally,  or  is  now  being  formed, 
from  non-living  matter,  by  the  operation  of  physical 
causes  and  natural  laws,  are  questions  which,  notwith- 


PREFACE.  vii 

Standing  the  lively  and  vigorous  handling  which  they 
have  had,  are  far  from  being  settled.  Exact  experi- 
ment can  alone  put  an  end  to  this  dispute :  the  one 
conclusive  experiment,  indeed,  in  proof  of  the  origin 
of  living  from  dead  matter,  will  be  to  make  life. 
Meanwhile,  as  the  subject  is  still  in  the  region  of  dis- 
cussion, it  is  permissible  to  set  forth  the  reflections 
which  the  facts  seem  to  warrant,  and  to  endeavor  to 
indicate  the  direction  of  scientific  development  which 
seems  to  be  foretokened  by,  or  to  exist  potentially  in, 
the  knowledge  which  we  have  thus  far  acquired.  This 
much  may  be  said :  that  those  who  oppose  the  doc- 
trine of  so-called  spontaneous  generation,  not  on  the 
ground  of  the  absence  of  conclusive  evidence  of  its 
occurrence,  which  they  might  justly  do,  but  on  the 
ground  of  what  they  consider  special  characteristics 
of  living  matter,  would  do  well  to  look  with  more  in- 
sight into  the  phenomena  of  non-living  Nature,  and  to 
consider  more  deeply  what  they  see,  in  order  to  dis- 
cover whether  the  characteristic  properties  of  life 
are  quite  so  special  and  exclusive  as  they  imagine 
them  to  be.  Having  done  that,  they  might  go  on  to 
consider  whether,  even  if  their  premises  were  grant- 
ed, any  conclusion  regarding  the  mode  of  origin  of  life 
would  legitimately  follow;  whether  in  fact  it  would 
not  be  entirely  gratuitous  and  unwarrantable  to  con- 
clude thence  the  impossibility  of  the  origin  of  living 
matter  from  non-living  matter.     The  etymological  im- 


viii  PREFACE. 

port  of  the  words  physics  and  physiology  is  notably 
the  same ;  and  it  may  be  that,  as  has  been  suggested, 
in  the  difference  of  their  application  lies  a  hidden 
irony  at  the  assumption  on  which  the  division  is 
grounded. 

9,  Hanover  Square,  W. 
November  5,  1870. 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURES. 

PAGE 

I. — On  the   Physical   Condition   of  Mental   Function  in   • 

Health  .  .  .  .  .  .11 

II._On  Certain  Forms  of  Degeneracy  of  Mind,  their 
Causation,  and  their  Relations  to  other  Dis- 
orders of  the  Nervous  System    .  .  .  41 

III. — On  the  Relations  of  Morbid  Bodily  States  to  Dis- 
ordered Mental  Functions    .  .  .  .10 


APPENDIX. 

I. — The  Limits  of  Philosophical  Inquiry  .  .  98 

II. — The  Theory  of  Vitality  .  .  .  .  .120 


BODY    AND    MIND: 

AN  INQUIKY  INTO   THEIR  CONNECTION  AND 

MUTUAL    INFLUENCE,    SPECIALLY    IN    EEFERENCE    TO 

MENTAL  DISOEDEES. 


LECTURE   I. 

Gentlemex:  The  relations  of  mind  and  body  in  health 
and  in  disease  I  have  chosen  as  the  subject  of  these  lectures, 
not  with  the  hope  of  doing  full  justice  to  so  complex  and 
difficult  an  inquiry,  but  because  it  has  for  some  time  been 
my  special  work,  and  there  was  no  other  subject  on  -which  I 
should  have  felt  myself  equally  justified  in  addressing  you. 
No  one  can  be  more  deeply  sensible  than  I  am  how  little 
exact  our  knowledge  is  of  the  bodily  conditions  of  mental 
functions,  and  how  much  of  that  which  we  think  we  know 
is  vague,  uncertain,  and  fluctuating.  But  the  time  has  como 
when  the  immediate  business  which  lies  before  any  one  who 
would  advance  our  know^ledge  of  mind  unquestionably  is  a 
close  and  searching  scrutiny  of  the  bodily  conditions  of  its 
manifestations  -in  health  and  disease.  It  is  most  necessary 
now  to  make  use  of  the  results  of  the  study  of  mind  in 
health  to  light  and  guide  our  researches  into  its  morbid  phe- 
nomena, and  in  like  manner  to  bring  the  instructive  in- 
stances presented  by  unsound  mind  to  bear  upon  the  inter- 
pretation of  its  healthy  functions.  The  physiology  and  the 
pathology  of  mind  are  two  branches  of  one  science  ;  and  he 


12  BODY  AXD  MIXD. 

who  studies  the  one  must,  if  he  would  work  wisely  and  wel], 
studj  the  other  also.  My  aim  will  he  to  promote  the  recon- 
ciliation hetween  them,  and  in  doing  so  I  shall  embrace  the 
occasion,  whenever  it  offers  itself,  to  indicate  the  principles 
which  should  guide  our  efforts  for  what  must  always  be  the 
highest  object  of  medical  science  and  art — the  production 
and  preservation  of  a  sound  mind  in  a  sound  body.  Act- 
ually to  accomplish  much  of  this  purpose  will  not  lie  in 
my  power,  but  I  may  bring  together  fragmentary  observa- 
tions, point  out  the  bearing  of  them  on  one  another  and  on 
received  opinions,  thus  unfold  their  meaning,  and  mark 
broadly  the  lines  which  future  research  must  take. 

"Within  the  memory  of  men  now  living  insanity  was  such 
a  spet-ial  study,  and  its  treatment  such  a  special  art,  that  it 
stood  quite  aloof  from  general  medicine  in  a  mysterious  and 
mischievous  isolation  ;  owing  little  or  nothing  to  the  results 
of  progress  in  other  branches  of  medicine,  and  contributing 
nothing  to  their  progress.  The  reason  of  this  it  is  not  hard 
to  discover.  The  habit  of  viewing  mind  as  an  intangible 
entity  or  incorporeal  essence,  which  science  inherited  from 
theology,  prevented  men  from  subjecting  its  phenomena  to 
the  same  method  of  investigation  as  other  natural  phenom- 
ena; its  disorders  were  thought  to  be  an  incomprehensible 
affliction  and,  in  accordance  with  the  theological  notion,  due 
to  the  presence  of  an  evil  spirit  in  the  sufferer,  or  to  the  en- 
slavement of  the  soul  by  sin,  or  to  any  thing  but  their  true 
cause — bodily  disease.  Consequently,  the  treatment  of  the 
insane  was  not  in  the  hands  of  intelligent  physicians,  who 
aimed  to  apply  the  resources  of  medicine  to  the  alleviation 
or  cure  of  bodily  illness,  but  was  given  up  to'  coarse  and  ig- 
norant jailers,  whose  savage  cruelties  will  for  all  time  to 
come  be  a  great  and  ugly  blot  upon  the  enlightenment  of  the 
age  which  tolerated  them. 

Matters  are  happily  changed  now.  On  all  hands  it  is  ad- 
mitted that  the  manifestations  of  mind  take  place  through 
the  nervous  system;  and'that  its  derangements  arc  the  result 


ORGAN   AND  FUNCTION.  13 

of  nervous  disease,  amenable  to  the  same  method  of  investi- 
gation as  other  nervous  diseases.  Insanity  has  accordingly 
become  a  strictly  medical  study,  and  its  treatment  a  branch 
of  medical  practice.  Still,  it  is  all  too  true  that,  notwith- 
standing we  know  much,  and  are  day  by  day  learning  more, 
of  the  physiology  of  the  nervous  system,  we  are  only  on  the 
threshold  of  the  study  of  it  as  an  instrument  subserving  men- 
tal function.  We  know  little  more  positively  than  that  it 
has  such  function ;  we  know  nothing  whatever  of  the  physics 
and  of  the  chemistry  of  thought.  The  conception  of  mind  as  a 
mysterious  entity,  diiferent  essentially  from,  and  vastly  supe- 
rior to,  the  body  which  it  inhabits  and  uses  as  its  earthly  tene- 
ment, but  from  which  its  noblest  aspirations  are  thought  to 
be  to  get  free,  still  works  openly  or  in  a  latent  way  to  ob- 
struct the  study  of  its  functions  by  the  methods  of  physical 
research.  Without  speculating  at  all  concerning  the  nature 
of  mind — v»^hich,  let  me  distinctly  declare  at  the  outset,  is  a 
question  which  science  cannot  touch,  and  I  do  not  dream  of 
attempting  to  touch — I  do  not  shrink  from  saying  that  we 
shall  make  no  progress  toward  a  mental  science  if  we  begin 
by  depreciating  the  body :  not  by  disdaining  it,  as  metaphy- 
sicians, religious  ascetics,  and  maniacs  have  done,  but  by 
laboring  in  an  earnest  and  inquiring  spirit  to  understand 
it,  shall  we  make  any  step  forward;  and  when  we  have 
fully  comprehended  its  functions,  when  we  know  how  to 
estimate  fitly  this  highest,  most  complex,  and  wonderful 
achievement  of  organized  skill,  it  will  be  quite  time,  if 
there  be  then  the  inclination,  to  look  down  upon  it  with 
contempt. 

The  truth  is,  that  in  inquiries  concerning  mind,  as  was 
once  the  case  in  speculations  concerning  other  natural  phe- 
nomena of  forces,  it  has  been  the  practice  to  begin  where  the 
inquiry  should  have  ended.  Just  as  the  laws  of  physical  ac- 
tions were  evoked  out  of  the  depths  of  human  consciousness, 
and  the  relations  of  bodies  to  one  another  attributed  to  sym- 
pathies and  antipathies,  attractions  and  abhorrences,  instead 


14  BODY  AND   MIND. 

of  being  acquired  by  patient  observation  and  careful  generaliza- 
tion, so  has  a  fabric  of  mental  philosophy  been  reared  on  the 
doubtful  revelations  of  self-consciousness,  in  entire  disregard 
of  the  more  tedious  and  less  attractive  duty  of  observation 
of  facts,  and  induction  from  them.  Surely  it  is  time  we 
put  seriously  to  ourselves  the  question  whether  the  inductive 
method,  which  has  proved  its  worth  by  its  abundant  fruit- 
fulness  wherever  it  has  been  faithfully  applied,  should  not 
be  as  rigidly  used  in  the  investigation  of  mind  as  in  the 
investigation  of  other  natural  phenomena.  If  so,  we  ought 
certainly  to  begin  our  inquiry  with  the  observation  of  the 
simplest  instances — with  its  physiological  manifestations  in 
animals,  in  children,  in  idiots,  in  savages,  mounting  by  de- 
grees to  the  highest  and  most  recondite  facts  of  consciousness, 
the  interpretation  or  the  misinterpretation  of  which  consti- 
tutes what  has  hitherto  claimed  to  be  mental  philosophy.  The 
inductions  which  we  get  by  observing  the  simple  may  be  used 
with  success  to  disentangle  the  phenomena  of  the  complex ; 
but  the  endeavor  to  apply  the  complex  and  obscure  to  the 
interpretation  of  the  simple  is  sure  to  end  in  confusion  and 
error.  The  higher  mental  faculties  are  formed  by  evolution 
from  the  more  simple  and  elementary,  just  as  the  more  spe- 
cial and  complex  structure  proceeds  from  the  more  simple  and 
general ;  and  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other  we  must,  if 
we  would  truly  learn,  follow  the  order  of  development.  Not 
that  it  is  within  my  present  purpose  to  trace  the  plan  of 
development  of  our  mental  faculties,  but  the  facts  and  argu- 
ments which  I  shall  bring  forward  will  prove  how  vain 
and  futile  it  is  to  strive  to  rear  a  sound  fabric  of  mental  sci- 
ence on  any  other  foundation. 

To  begin  the  study  of  mind,  then,  with  the  observation 
of  its  humblest  bodily  manifestations  is  a  strictly  scientific 
method.  When  we  come  to  inquire  what  these  are,  it  is  far 
from  easy  to  fix  the  point  at  which  mental  function  begins. 
Without  doubt  most  of  the  actions  of  man,  and  many  of 
those  of  the  higher  animals,  do  evince  the  operation  of  mind, 


REFLEX  ACTION.  15 

but  whereabouts  in  the  animal  kingdom  it  first  appears,  and 
what  part  it  has  in  the  lower  nerve-functions  of  man,  arc 
questions  not  easily  answered.  The  more  closely  the  matter 
is  looked  into,  the  more  clearly  it  appears  that  we  habitually 
embrace  in  our  conception  of  mind  different  nervous  func- 
tions, some  of  which  proceed  from  different  nerve-centres, 
and  the  more  necessary  it  becomes  to  analyze  these  functions, 
to  separate  tlie  more  simple  and  elementary,  and  to  discover 
in  the  concrete  as  much  as  possible  of  the  meaning  of  the 
abstraction.  Is  the  brain  the  exclusive  organ  of  mind?  If 
it  be  so,  to  what  category  of  functions  shall  we  refer  the  re- 
flex acts  of  the  spinal  cord,  which  take  place  independently 
of  the  brain,  and  which  often  achieve  as  definite  an  end,  and 
seem  to  display  as  intelligent  an  aim,  as  any  conscious  act  of 
volition?  It  needs  not  to  illustrate  in  detail  the  nature  and 
extent  of  reflex  action,  which  is  familiar  enough,  but  I  may 
select  a  striking  example  in  order  to  serve  as  a  text  for  the 
reflections  which  I  wish  to  bring  forward.  One  simple  fact, 
rightly  understood  and  truly  interpreted,  will  teach  as  much 
as  a  thousand  facts  of  the  same  kind,  but  the  thousand  must 
have  been  previously  observed  in  order  to  understand  truly 
the  one ;  for  it  is  certainly  true  that,  to  apprehend  the  fidl 
meaning  of  common  things,  it  is  necessary  to  study  a  great 
many  uncommon  things.  This,  however,  has  been  done  in 
this  instance  by  the  distinguished  physiologists  whose  labors 
have  fixed  on  a  tolerably  firm  basis  the  doctrine  of  reflex 
action ;  we  may,  therefore,  take,  as  our  starting-point,  the 
accepted  results  of  their  labors. 

It  is  well  known  that,  if  the  hind-foot  of  a  frog  that  has 
had  its  head  cut  off  be  pinched,  it  is  withdrawn  from  the  ir- 
ritation. The  stimulus  to  the  afferent  nerve  reaches  the  gray 
matter  of  the  spinal  cord,  and  sets  free  a  force  which  excites 
to  action  the  corresponding  motor  nerves  of  the  same  side. 
When  the  foot  is  pinched  more  strongly,  the  force  liberated 
by  the  stimulus  passes  across  the  cord  to  the  motor  nerves 
of  the  opposite  side,  and  there  is  a  simultaneous  withdrawal 


16  BODY  AND   MIXD. 

of  both  limbs;  and,  if  tbe  excitation  be  stronger  still,  there 
is  a  wider  irradiation  of  the  effects  of  the  stimulus  in  the 
gray  matter,  and  a  movement  of  all  four  limbs  follows,  the 
frog  jumping  away.  These  movements  of  the  decapitated 
frog,  which  it  is  plain  effect  the  definite  purpose  of  getting  it 
out  of  the  way  of  harm,  we  believe  to  be  analogous  to  the 
violent  coughing  by  which  food  that  has  gone  the  wrong  way 
is  expelled  from  the  human  larynx,  or  to  the  vomiting  by 
which  offending  matter  is  ejected  from  the  stomach.  Inde- 
pendently of  consciousness  and  of  will,  an  organism  plainly 
has  the  power — call  it  intelligent  or  call  it  Avhat  we  will — of 
feeling  and  eschewing  what  is  hurtful  to  it,  as  well  as  of  feel- 
ing and  ensuing  what  is  beneficial  to  it. 

But  the  experiment  on  the  frog  may  be  made  more  striking 
and  instructive.  Touch  with  acetic  acid  the  thigh  of  a  de- 
capitated frog  over  the  internal  condyle,  and  the  animal  rubs 
it  off  with  the  dorsal  surface  of  the  foot  of  the  same  side ; 
cut  off  the  foot,  and  apply  the  acid  to  the  same  spot,  and  the 
animal  tries  to  get  at  it  again  with  its  foot,  but,  of  course, 
having  lost  it,  cannot.  After  some  fruitless  efforts,  therefore, 
it  gives  up  trying  in  that  way,  seems  restless,  as  though,  says 
Pfltiger,  it  was  seeking  some  other  way;  and  at  last  it  makes 
use  of  the  foot  of  the  other  leg,  and  succeeds  in  rubbing  off 
the  acid.  ITotably  we  have  here  not  merely  contractions  of 
muscles,  but  combined  and  harmonized  contractions  in  due 
sequence  for  a  special  purpose.  There  are  actions  that  have 
all  the  appearance  of  being  guided  by  intelligence  and  insti- 
gated by  will  in  an  animal  the  recognized  organ  of  whose  in- 
telligence and  will  has  been  removed. 

What  are  we  to  say  in  explanation  of  movements  that  have 
such  a  look  of  adaptation?  Are  they  mental,  or  are  they 
only  physical?  If  they  are  mental,  it  is  plain  that  we  must 
much  enlarge  and  modify  our  conception  of  mind,  and  of  the 
seat  of  mind ;  if  physical,  it  is  plain  that  we  must  subtract 
from  mind  functions  that  are  essential  to  its  full  function,  and 
properties  that  are  the  very  foundations  of  its  development 


PURPOSIVE  ACTS.  17 

in  the  higher  centres.  Some  eminent  pliysiologists  now 
maintain,  on  tlife  strength  of  these  experiments,  that  tlie  ac- 
ceptod  doctrine  of  reflex  action  is  quite  untenable,  and  that 
the  spinal  cord  is  really  endowed  with  sensation  and  volition; 
and  certainly  these  adapted  actions  seem  to  give  us  all  the 
signs  of  being  felt  and  willed,  except  telling  us  that  they  are 
so.  Before  accepting,  however,  this  explanation  of  the  ob- 
scure by  something  more  obscure  still,  it  were  well  to  I'ealize 
distinctly  how  dangerous  a  practice  it  usually  is  to  apply  de- 
ductively to  the  interpretation  of  simple  phenomena  ideas 
pertaining  to  the  more  complex,  and  how  essential  a  princi- 
ple of  the  method  of  induction  it  is  to  follow  the  order  of 
evolution,  and  to  ascend  from  the  interpretation  of  the  sim- 
ple to  that  of  the  complex.  The  explanation  savors  of  the 
old  and  evil  tendency  which  has  done  so  much  harm  in  phi- 
losophy, the  tendency  to  explain  the  facts  of  ISTature  by  what 
we  feel  to  go  on  in  our  minds  ;  because  we  know  that  most  of 
our  actions  take  place  consciously  and  voluntarily,we  can  hard- 
ly help  thinking  that  it  must  be  the  same  in  the  frog.  Might 
we  not,  however,  as  well  suppose  and  hold  that  positive  at- 
tracts negative  and  repels  positive  electricity  consciously  and 
voluntarily,  or  that  in  the  double  decomposition  of  chemical 
salts  one  acid  chooses  voluntarily  the  other  base?  It  is  most 
necessary  to  be  on  our  guard  against  the  danger  of  misapply- 
ing ideas  derived  from  internal  observation  of  the  functions 
of  mind-centres  to  the  interpretation  of  the  functions  of 
lower  nerve-centres,  and  so  of  misinterpreting  them.  As- 
suredly we  have  sad  experience  enough  to  warn  us  against 
involving  the  latter  in  the  metaphysical  haze  Avhich  still 
hangs  over  the  functions  of  the  supreme  centres. 

All  the  conclusion  w^hich  the  facts  warrant  is  that  actions 
for  a  definite  end,  having  indeed  the  semblance  of  predesign- 
ing  consciousness  and  will,  may  be  quite  unconscious  and  auto- 
matic ;  that  the  movements  of  the  decapitated  frog,  adapted 
as  they  are  to  secure  its  well-being,  are  no  more  evidence  of 
intelligence  and  will  than  are  the  movements  of  coughing, 


18  BODY  AND  MIND. 

sneezing,  and  swallowing  in  man.  In  the  constitution  of  the 
animal's  spinal  cord  are  implanted  the  faculties  of  such  move- 
ments for  self-preservation,  which  it  has  inherited  as  a  part 
of  its  nature,  and  without  which  it  could  hardly  live  a  day ; 
accordingly  it  acts  necessarily  and  blindly ;  though  it  has  lost 
its  foot,  it  endeavors  vainly  to  act  as  if  its  foot  was  still  there, 
and  only  when  the  irritation  continues  unaffected  by  its  futile 
efforts  makes,  in  answer  to  it,  those  further  reflex  movements 
which  are  the  physiological  sequences  of  the  unsuccessful 
movements:  it  supplements  one  series  of  reflex  actions  by 
another.*  But,  although  these  purposive  movements  are  not 
evidence  of  intelligence  and  volition  in  the  spinal  cord,  it  is 
another  question  whether  they  do  not  evince  the  same  physi- 
ological properties  and  the  operation  of  the  same  laws  of 
evolution  as  govern  the  development  of  intelligence  and  will 
in  the  higher  centres. 

I  have  taken  the  experiment  on  the  frog  to  exemplify  the 
proposition  that  designed  actions  may  be  unconscious  and 
automatic,  because  the  phenomena  are  more  simple  in  it  than 
in  man,  and  more  easy  therefore  to  be  understood ;  but  the 
proposition  is  equally  true  of  his  spinal  cord.  In  its  case, 
however,  we  have  to  bear  in  mind  that  faculties  are  not  in- 
nate to  the  same  degree  and  extent  as  in  the  lower  animals, 
but  have  to  be  acquired  by  education — to  be  organized,  in 
fact,  after  birth.  It  must  be  taught,  just  as  the  brain  must, 
before  it  can  perform  its  functions  as  an  organ  of  animal  life ; 
and,  being  much  more  under  the  control  of  the  more  highly- 
developed  brain,  feeling  and  volition  commonly  mingle  largely 
in  its  functions,  and  its  independent  action  cannot  be  so 
plainly  exhibited.  But,  when  its  motor  centres  have  been 
taught,  when  they  have  gained  by  education  the  power  of 
executing  what  are  called  secondary  automatic  acts,  it  is  cer- 

*  Wisely  or  unwisely,  as  the  case  may  be  ;  for  reflex  movements  which 
commonly  effect  a  useful  end  may,  under  the  changed  circumstances  of  dis- 
ease, do  great  mischief,  becoming  even  the  occasion  of  violent  suffering 
and  of  a  most  painful  death. 


SECONDARY  AUTOMATIC   ACTS.  19 

tain  that  it  can  and  does  habitually  execute  them  indepen- 
dently of  consciousness  and  of  will.  They  become  as  purely 
automatic  as  are  the  primitive  reflex  acts  of  the  frog.  To  the 
statement,  then,  that  actions  bearing  the  semblance  of  design 
may  be  unconscious  and  automatic  we  have  now  to  add  a 
second  and  most  weighty  proposition — namely,  that  acts  con- 
sciously designed  at  first  may,  by  repetition,  become  uncon- 
scious and  automatic,  the  faculties  of  them  being  organized 
in  the  constitution  of  the  nerve-centres,  and  they  being  then 
performed  as  reflex  effects  of  an  external  stimulus.  This  law, 
by  which  the  education  of  the  spinal  cord  takes  place,  is,  as 
we  shall  hereafter  see,  a  most  important  law  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  higher  nerve-centres. 

Let  us  now  go  a  step  further.  The  automatic  acts,  whether 
primary  or  secondary,  in  the  frog  or  in  the  man,  which  are 
excited  by  tlie  suitable  external  stimulus,  may  also  be  excited 
by  an  act  of  will,  by  an  impulse  coming  downward  from  the 
brain.  "When  this  happens,  it  should  be  clearly  apprehended 
that  the  immediate  agency  of  the  movements  is  the  same  ;  it 
is  in  the  motor  centres  of  the  spinal  cord;  the  Avill  does  not 
and  cannot  act  upon  the  nerve-fibres  of  each  muscle  individu- 
ally, but  simply  gives  the  order  which  sets  in  motion  the  or- 
ganized machinery  of  the  movements  in  the  proper  motor 
centres.  This  is  a  consideration  of  the  utmost  importance, 
for  it  exhibits  how  great  a  part  of  our  voluntary  acts  is  really 
the  automatic  action  of  the  spinal  cord.  The  same  move- 
ments are  effected  by  the  same  agency  in  answer  to  dififerent 
stimuli — in  the  one  case  to  an  external  stimulus,  in  the  other 
case  to  an  impulse  of  will ;  and  in  both  cases  the  mind  is  alike 
ignorant  of  the  immediate  agency  by  which  they  are  done. 
But  while  the  automatic  acts  take  place  independently  of 
will,  the  will  is  absolutely  dependent  on  the  organized  expe- 
rience in  the  cord  for  the  accomplishment  of  its  acts  ;  with- 
out this  it  would  be  impotent  to  do  a  voluntary  act.  TThen, 
therefore,  we  have  taken  out  of  a  voluntary  act  the  large 
part  which  is  due  to  the  automatic  agency  of  the  motor  cen- 


20  BODY  AND  MIXD. 

tres,  it  clearly  appears  that  we  have  subtracted  no  small 
proportion  from  what  we  are  in  the  habit  of  comprising 
vaguely  under  mind.  We  perceive,  indeed,  how  indispensa- 
ble an  exact  and  faithful  observation  of  the  functions  of  the 
spinal  cord  is  to  a  true  physiological  inquiry  into  mind,  and 
what  an  important  means  of  analysis  a  knowledge  of  them 
yields  us.  Carrying  the  knowledge  so  gained  into  our  exami- 
nation of  the  functions  of  the  higher  nerve-centres,  we  ob- 
serve how  much  of  them  it  will  serve  to  interpret.  The  re- 
sult is,  that  we  find  a  great  part  of  the  habitual  functions  of 
the  higher  centres  to  be  similarly  automatic,  and  to  admit  of 
a  similar  physiological  interpretation. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  ganglionic  nuclei  of  the 
senses — the  sensorial  nuclei — are  connected  with  motor  nu- 
clei ;  and  that  we  have  in  such  anatomical  arrangement  the 
agency  of  a  number  of  reflex  movements.  Most  of  the  in- 
stinctive acts  of  animals  are  of  this  kind,  the  faculties  being 
innate  in  them.  In  man,  however,  who  is  actually  the  most 
helpless,  though  potentially  the  most  powerful,  of  all  living 
creatures  when  he  comes  into  the  world,  the  sensory  and 
associated  motor  nuclei  must  be  educated,  just  as  the  spinal 
centres  must.  To  illustrate  this  sensori-motor  or  instinctive 
action,  we  may  take  the  results  of  Flourens's  well-known 
experiment  of  removing  the  cerebral  hemispheres  of  a  pigeon. 
What  happens  ?  The  pigeon  seemingly  loses  at  once  all  in- 
telligence and  all  power  of  spontaneous  action.  It  appears 
as  if  it  were  asleep  ;  yet,  if  thrown  into  the  air,  it  will  fly. 
If  laid  on  its  back,  it  struggles  on  to  its  legs  again ;  the  pupil 
of  the  eye  contracts  to  light,  and,  if  the  light  be  very  bright, 
the  eyes  are  shut.  It  will  dress  its  feathers  if  they  are  ruffled, 
and  will  sometimes  follow  with  a  movement  of  its  head  the 
movement  of  a  candle  before  it ;  and,  when  a  pistol  is  fired  off, 
it  will  open  its  eyes,  stretch  its  neck,  raise  its  head,  and  then 
fall  back  into  its  former  attitude.  It  is  quite  evident  from 
this  experiment  that  general  sensibility  and  special  sensations 
are  possible  after  the  removal  of  the  hemispheres ;  but  they 


SEXSORI-MOTOR   ACTS.  21 

are  not  then  transformed  into  ideas.  The  impressions  of  sense 
reach  and  affect  the  sensory  centres,  but  they  are  not  intel- 
lectually ^C7'm2;<?<7 ;  and  the  proper  movements  are  excited, 
but  these  are  reflex  or  automatic.  There  are  no  ideas,  there 
is  no  true  spontaneity ;  and  the  animal  would  die  of  hunger 
before  a  plateful  of  food,  though  it  will  swallow  it  when 
pushed  far  enough  into  its  mouth  to  come  within  the  range 
of  the  reflex  acts  of  deglutition.  Here  again,  then,  we  have 
a  surprising  variety  of  adapted  actions  of  which  the  body  is 
capable  without  the  intervention  of  intelligence,  emotion,  and 
will — without,  in  fact,  mind  in  its  exact  sense  having  any  part 
in  them.  The  pigeon  is  brought  to  the  level  of  the  inverte- 
brata,  which  have  no  higher  nerve-centres  than  sensory 
ganglia,  no  centres  of  intelligence  and  will,  and  Vv-hich  exe- 
cute all  their  varied  and  active  movements,  all  their  wonder- 
ful displays  of  instinct,  through  sensory  and  associated  motor 
nuclei.  They  seek  what  is  good  for  them,  avoid  what  is 
hurtful  to  them,  provide  for  the  propagation  of  their  kind — 
perform,  indeed,  all  the  functions  of  a  very  active  life  without 
Icnowing  that  they  are  doing  so,  not  otherwise  than  as  our 
pupils  contract  to  light,  or  as  our  eyes  accommodate  them- 
selves to  vision  at  different  distances,  without  consciousness 
on  our  part.  The  highest  specializations  of  this  kind  of 
nerve-function  are  displayed  by  the  ant  and  the  bee ;  their 
wonderful  instinctive  arts  show  to  what  a  degree  of  special 
perfection  sensori-motor  action  may  be  brought.* 

*  I  do  not  say  that  the  ant  and  the  hee  are  entirely  destitute  of  any  power 
of  adaptation  to  new  experiences  in  their  lives— that  theyare,  in  fact,  purely 
organized  machines,  acting  always  with  unvarying  regularity;  it  would 
appear,  indeed,  from  close  observation,  that  these  creatures  do  sometimes 
discover  in  their  actions  traces  of  a  sensibility  to  strange  experiences,  and 
of  corresponding  adaptation  of  movements.  We  cannot,  moreover,  con- 
ceive how  the  remarkable  instincts  which  they  manifest  can  have  been 
acquired  originally,  except  by  virtue  of  some  such  power.  But  the  power 
in  them  now  is  evidently  of  a  radimentary  kind,  and  must  remain  so  while 
they  have  not  those  higher  nerve-centres  in  which  the  sensations  are  com- 
bined into  ideas,  and  perceptions  of  the  relations  of  things  are  acquired. 
Granting,  however,  that  the  bee  or  ant  has  these  traces  of  adaptive  action, 


22  BODY  AXD  MIND. 

Unlike  the  Dee  and  the  ant,  man  must  slowly  learn -the 
use  of  his  senses  and  their  respondent  movements.  This  he 
does  by  virtue  of  the  fundamental  property  of  nerve-centres, 
whereby  they  react  in  a  definite  way  to  suitable  impressions, 
organically  register  their  experience,  and  so  acquire  by  edu- 
cation their  special  faculties.  Thus  it  is  that  many  of  the 
daily  actions  of  our  life,  which  directly  follow  impressions 
on  the  senses,  take  place  in  answer  to  sensations  that  are  not 
perceived — become,  so  to  speak,  instinctive  ;  some  of  them 
being  not  a  whit  less  automatic  than  the  instinctive  acts  of 
the  bee,  or  the  acts  of  the  pigeon  deprived  of  its  hemispheres. 
"When  we  move  about  in  a  room  with  the  objects  in  which 
we  are  quite  familiar,  we  direct  our  steps  so  as  to  avoid  them, 
without  being  conscious  what  they  are,  or  what  we  are  do- 
ing ;  we  see  them,  as  we  easily  discover  if  we  try  to  move 
about  in  the  same  way  with  our  eyes  shut,  but  we  do  not 
perceive  them,  the  mind  being  fully  occupied  with  some  train 
of  thought.  In  like  manner,  when  we  go  through  a  series 
of  familiar  acts,  as  in  dressing  or  undressing  ourselves,  the 
operations  are  really  automatic ;  once  begun,  we  continue 
them  in  a  mechanical  order,  while  the  mind  is  thinking  of 
other  things  ;  and  if  we  afterward  reflect  upon  what  we  have 
done,  in  order  to  call  to  mind  whether  we  did  or  did  not  omit 
something,  as  for  instance  to  wind  up  our  watch,  we  cannot 
satisfy  ourselves  except  by  trial,  even  though  we  had  actually 
done  what  we  were  in  doubt  about.  It  is  evident,  indeed, 
that  in  a  state  of  profound  reverie  or  abstraction  a  person 
may,  as  a  somnambulist  sometimes  does,  see  without  know- 
it  must  be  allowed  that  they  are  truly  nidiments  of  functions,  which  in  the 
supreme  nerve-centres  we  designate  as  reason  and  volition.  Such  a  con- 
fession might  be  a  trouble  to  a  metaphysical  physiologist,  who  would  there- 
upon find  it  necessary  to  place  a  metaphysical  entity  behind  the  so-called 
instincts  of  the  bee,  but  can  be  no  trouble  to  the  inductive  physiologist ;  he 
simply  recognizes  an  illustration  of  a  physiological  difl'usion  of  properties, 
and  of  the  physical  conditions  of  primitive  volition,  and  traces  in  the  evo- 
lution of  mind  and  its  organs,  as  jn  the  evolution  of  other  functions  and 
their  organs,  a  progressive  specialization  and  increasing  complexity. 


SUPREME  NERVE-CEXTIIES.  23 

ing  that  he  sees,  hear  without  knowing  that  he  hears,  and  go 
through  a  series  of  acts  scarcely,  if  at  all,  conscious  of  them 
at  the  time,  and  not  remembering  them  afterward.  For  the 
most  distinct  display  of  sensori-motor  action  in  man,  it  is 
necessary  that  his  cerebral  hemispheres,  which  are  so  largely 
developed,  and  intervene  much  in  the  functions  of  the  subor- 
dinate centres,  should  be  deeply  engaged  in  their  own  func- 
tions, or  that  these  should  be  suspended.  This  appears  to 
be  the  case  in  those  brief  attacks  of  epileptic  unconsciousness 
known  as  the  ^;<?^i^  mal^  in  which  a  person  will  sometimes 
go  on  with  the  work  he  was  engaged  in  at  the  time  of  the 
attack,  utterly  unaware  of  the  momentary  interruption  of 
his  consciousness.*  There  are  many  instances  of  this  sort  on 
record,  which  I  cannot  stop  to  relate  now ;  they  prove  how 
large  a  part  sensori-motor  functions,  which  are  the  highest 
nerve-functions  of  so  many  animals,  play  in  our  daily  actions. 
We  ought  clearly  to  apprehend  the  fact  that,  as  with  the 
spinal  cord,  so  here,  the  movements  which  take  place  in  an- 
swer to  the  stimulus  from  without  may  be  excited  by  the 
stimulus  of  the  will  descending  from  the  hemispheres,  and 
that,  when  they  are  so  excited,  the  immediate  agency  of  them 
is  the  same.  The  movements  that  are  outwardly  manifest 
are,  as  it  were,  contained  inwardly  in  the  appropriate  motor 
nuclei ;  these  have  been  educated  to  perform  them.  Hence 
it  is  that,  when  the  left  corpus  striatum  is  broken  up  by  dis- 
ease, the  right  cannot  do  its  special  work ;  if  it  could,  a  man 
naight  write  with  his  left  hand  when  his  right  hand  was  dis- 
abled by  paralysis. 

Thus  much,  then,  concerning  our  sensori-motor  acts. 
When  we  have  yielded  up  to  the  spinal  cord  all  the  part  in 
our  actions  that  properly  belongs  to  it,  and  to  th.Q  sensory  gan- 
glia and  their  connected  motor  nuclei  all  the  part  that  be- 
longs to  them,  we  have  subtracted  no  inconsiderable  part 
from  the  phenomena  which  we  are  in  the  habit  of  designating 

*  For  examples,  I  may  refer  to  my  work  on  "  The  Physiology  and  Pa- 
thology of  Mind,''  2d  edition. 


24  BODY  AND   MIND. 

mental  and  including  under  mind.  But  we  still  leave  un- 
touched the  highest  functions  of  the  nervous  system — those 
to  which  the  hemispherical  ganglia  minister.  These  are  the 
functions  of  intelligence,  of  emotion,  and  of  will ;  they  are 
the  strictly  mental  functions.  The  question  at  once  arises 
vfhether  we  have  to  do  in  these  supreme  centres  with  funda- 
mentally different  properties  and  different  laws  of  evolution 
from  those  which  belong  to  the  lower  nerve-centres.  We 
have  to  do  with  different  functions  certainly ;  but  are  the 
organic  processes  which  take  place  in  them  essentially  differ- 
ent from,  or  are  they  identical  with,  those  of  the  lower 
nerve-centres?  They  appear  to  be  essentially  the  same: 
there  is  a  reception  of  impressions,  and  there  is  a  reaction  to 
impressions,  and  there  is  an  organic  registration  of  the  effects 
both  of  the  impressions  and  of  the  reactions  to  them.  The  ex- 
ternal stimuli  do  not,  it  is  true,  ascend  directly  to  the  supreme 
centres  as  they  do  to  the  spinal  centres  and  the  sensory  cen- 
tres; they  are  transmitted  indirectly  through  the  sensory 
ganglia ;  it  is  through  the  senses  that  we  get  our  ideas.  This 
is  in  accordance  with  the  anatomical  observation — which, 
however,  is  disputed  —  that  no  sensory  fibres  go  directly 
through  to  the  hemispheres,  and  no  motor  fibres  start  directly 
from  them ;  both  sensory  and  motor  fibres  stopping  at  the 
corpora  striata  and  thalami  optici,  and  new  fibres  connect- 
ing these  with  the  hemispheres.  But  this  does  not  alter  the 
fundamental  similarity  of  the  organic  processes  in  the  higher 
centres.  The  impressions  which  are  made  there  are  the  physi- 
ological conditions  of  ideas ;  the  feeling  of  the  ideas  is  emo- 
tion— for  I  hold  emotion  to  mean  the  special  sensibility  of 
the  vesicular  neurine  to  ideas — the  registration  of  them  is 
memory;  and  the  reaction  to  them  is  volition.  Attention 
is  the  maintenance  of  the  tension  of  an  idea  or  a  group  of 
ideas — the  keeping  it  before  the  mind ;  and  rejlection  is  the 
successive  transference  of  energy  from  one  to  another  of  a 
series  of  ideas.  We  know  not,  and  perhaps  never  shall  know, 
what  mind  is ;  but  we  are  nevertheless  bound  to  investigate. 


MEMORY.  25 

in  a  scientific  spirit,  the  laws  of  its  functions,  and  to  trace 
the  resemblances  which  undoubtedly  exist  between  them  and 
the  functions  of  lower  nerve-centres. 

Take,  for  example,  the  so-called  faculty  of  memory,  of 
which  metaphysicians  have  made  so  much  as  affording  us  the 
knowledge  of  personal  identity.  From  the  way  in  which 
they  usually  treat  of  it,  one  would  suppose  that  memory  was 
peculiar  to  mind,  and  far  beyond  the  reach  of  physical  ex- 
I)lanation.  But  a  little  reflection  will  prove  that  it  is  noth- 
ing of  the  kind.  The  acquired  functions  of  the  spinal  cord, 
and  of  the  sensory  ganglia,  obviously  imply  the  existence  of 
memory,  which  is  indispensable  to  their  formation  and  exer- 
cise. How  else  could  these  centres  be  educated  ?  The  im- 
pressions made  upon  them,  and  the  answering  movements, 
both  leave  their  traces  behind  them,  which  are  capable  of 
being  revived  on  the  occasions  of  similar  impressions.  A 
ganglionic  centre,  v/hether  of  mind,  sensation,  or  movement, 
which  was  without  memory,  would  be  an  idiotic  centre,  in- 
capable of  being  taught  its  functions.  In  every  nerve-cell 
there  is  memory,  and  not  only  so,  but  there  is  memory  in 
every  organic  element  of  the  body.  The  virus  of  small-pox 
or  of  syphilis  makes  its  mark  on  the  constitution  for  the  rest 
of  life.  We  may  forget  it,  but  it  will  not  forget  us,  though, 
like  the  memory  of  an  old  man,  it  may  fade  and  become  faint 
with  advancing  age.  The  manner  in  which  the  scar  of  a  cut 
in  a  child's  finger  is  perpetuated,  and  grows  as  the  body  grows, 
evinces,  as  Mr.  Paget  has  pointed  out,  that  the  organic  ele- 
ment of  the  part  remembers  the  change  which  it  has  suffered. 
Memory  is  the  organic  registration  of  the  effects  of  impres- 
sions, the  organization  of  experience,  and  to  recollect  is  to 
revive  this  experience — to  call  the  organized  residua  into 
functional  activity. 

The  fact  that  memory  is  accompanied  by  consciousness  in 

the  supreme  centres  does  not  alter  the  fundamental  nature  of 

the  organic  processes  that  are  the  condition  of  it.     The  more 

sure  and  perfect,  indeed,  memory  becomes,  the  more  uncon- 

2 


26  BODY  AND  MIND. 

scious  it  becomes;  and,  when  an  idea  or  mental  state  has 
been  completely  organized,  it  is  revived  without  conscious- 
ness, and  takes  its  part  automatically  in  our  mental  opera- 
tions, just  as  an  habitual  movement  does  in  our  bodily  activ- 
ity. "We  perceive  in  operation  here  the  same  law  of  organi- 
zation of  conscious  acquisitions  as  unconscious  power,  which 
we  observed  in  the  functions  of  the  lower  nerve-centres.  A 
child,  while  learning  to  speak  or  read,  has  to  remember  the 
meaning  of  each  word,  must  tediously  exercise  its  memory  ; 
but  which  of  us  finds  it  necessary  to  remember  the  meanings 
of  the  common  words  which  we  are  daily  using,  as  Ave  must 
do  those  of  a  foreign  language  with  which  we  are  not  very 
familiar  ?  "We  do  remember  them,  of  course,  but  it  is  by  an 
unconscious  memory.  In  like  manner,  a  pupil,  learning  to 
play  the  piano-forte, is  obliged  to  call  to  mind  each  note:  but 
the  skilful  player  goes  through  no  such  process  of  conscious 
remembrance ;  his  ideas,  like  his  movements,  are  automatic, 
and  both  so  rapid  as  to  surpass  the  rapidity  of  succession  of 
conscious  ideas  and  movements.  To  my  mind,  there  are  in- 
controvertible reasons  to  conclude  that  the  organic  conditions 
of  memory  are  the  same  in  the  supreme  centres  of  thought 
as  they  are  in  the  lower  centres  of  sensation  and  of  reflex 
action.  Accordingly,  in  a  brain  that  is  not  disorganized  by 
injury  or  disease,  the  organic  registrations  are  never  actually 
forgotten,  but  endure  while  life  lasts ;  no  wave  of  oblivion 
can  efface  their  characters.  Consciousness,  it  is  true,  may 
be  impotent  to  recall  them  ;  but  a  fever,  a  blow  on  the  liead, 
a  poison  in  the  blood,  a  dream,  the  agony  of  drowning,  the 
hour  of  death,  rending  the  veil  between  our  present  con- 
sciousness and  these  inscriptions,  will  sometimes  call  viv- 
idly back,  in  a  momentary  flash,  and  call  back  too  with  all 
the  feelings  of  the  original  experience,  much  that  seemed  to 
have  vanished  from  the  mind  forever.  In  the  deepest  and 
most  secret  recesses  of  mind,  there  is  nothing  hidden  from 
the  individual  self,  or  from  others,  which  may  not  be  thus 
some  time  ^accidentally  revealed ;  so  that  it  might  well  be 


VOLITION.  27 

that,  as  De  Qiiincey  surmised,  the  opening  of  the  book  at 
the  day  of  judgment  shall  be  the  unfolding  of  the  everlasting 
scroll  of  memory.* 

As  it  is  Avith  memory  so  is  it  with  volition,  which  is  a 
physiological  function  of  the  supreme  centres,  and  which,  like 
memory,  becomes  more  unconscious  and  automatic  the  more 
completely  it  is  organized  by  repeated  practice.  It  is  not 
man's  function  in  life  to  think  and  feel  only;  his  inner  life  he 
must  express  or  utter  in  action  of  some  kind — in  word  or 
deed.  Eeceiving  the  impressions  from  Nature,  of  which  he 
is  a  part,  he  reacts  upon  l^ature  intelligently,  modifying  it  in 
a  variety  of  ways ;  thus  Nature  passes  through  human  na- 
ture to  a  higher  evolution.  As  the  spinal  cord  reacts  to  its 
impressions  in  excito-motor  action,  and  as  the  sensory  centres 
react  to  their  impressions  in  sensori-motor  action,  so,  after 
the  complex  interworking  and  combination  of  ideas  in  the 
hemispherical  ganglia,  there  is,  in  like  manner,  a  reaction  or 
desire  of  determination  of  energy  outward,  in  accordance 
with  the  fundamental  property  of  organic  structure  to  seek 
what  is  beneficial  and  shun  what  is  hurtful  to  it.  It  is  this 
property  of  tissue  that  gives  the  impulse  which,  when  guided 
by  intelligence,  we  call  volition,  and  it  is  the  abstraction 
from  the  particular  volitions  which  metaphysicians  personify 
as  the  uill,  and  regard  as  their  determining  agent.  Physio- 
logically, we  cannot  choose  but  reject  tJie  will;  volition  we 
know,  and  will  we  know,  but  the  will.,  apart  from  particular 
acts  of  volition  or  will,  we  cannot  know.  To  interpose  such 
a  metaphysical  entity  between  reflection  and  action  there- 
upon would  bring  us  logically  to  the  necessity  of  interposing 
a  similar  entity  between  the  stimulus  ^o  the  spinal  cord  and 
its  reaction.  Thus,  instead  of  unravelling  the  complex  by 
help  of  the  more  simple,  we  should  obscure  the  simple  by 

*  An  apt  illustration,  most  true  to  Nature,  of  the  recurrence  of  early 
impressions  in  the  delirium  of  dying,  is  afforded  by  Falstaff.  who,  as  he 
expires  in  a  London  tavern  after  a  life  of  debauchery,  babbles  of  green 
fields. 


28  '    BODY  AND  MIND. 

speculations  concerning  the  complex.  As  physiologists,  we 
have  to  deal  with  volition  as  a  function  of  the  supreme  cen- 
tres, following  reflection,  varying  in  quantity  and  quality  as 
its  cause  varies,  strengthened  by  education  and  exercise,  en- 
feebled by  disuse,  decaying  with  decay  of  structure,  and  al- 
ways needing  for  its  outward  expression  the  educated  agency 
of  the  subordinate  motor  centres.  We  have  to  deal  with 
will,  not  as  a  single  undecomposable  faculty  unaffected  by 
bodily  conditions,  but  as  a  result  of  organic  changes  in  the 
supreme  centres,  affected  as  certainly  and  seriously  by  dis- 
order of  them  as  our  motor  faculties  are  by  disorder  of  their 
centres.  Loss  of  power  of  will  is  one  of  the  earliest  and  most 
characteristic  symptoms  of  mental  derangement ;  and  what- 
ever may  have  been  thought  in  times  past,  we  know  well 
now  that  the  loss  is  not  the  work  of  some  unclean  spirit  that 
has  laid  its  hands  upon  the  will,  but  the  direct  effect  of 
physical  disease. 

But  I  must  pass  on  now  to  other  matters,  without  stop- 
ping to  unfold  at  length  the  resemblances  between  the  prop- 
erties of  the  supreme  centres  and  those  of  the  lower  nerve- 
centres.  We  see  that  the  supreme  centres  are  educated,  as 
the  other  centres  are,  and  the  better  they  are  educated  the 
better  do  they  perform  their  functions  of  thinking  and  willing. 
The  development  of  mind  is  a  gradual  process  of  organization 
in  them.  Ideas,  as  they  are  successively  acquired  through 
the  gateways  of  the  senses,  are  blended  and  combined  and 
grouped  in  a  complexity  that  defies  analysis,  the  organic  com- 
binations being  the  physiological  conditions  of  our  highest 
mental  operations — reflection,  reasoning,  and  judgment.  Two 
leading  ideas  we  ought  to  grasp  and  hold  fast :  first,  that  the 
complex  and  more  recondite  phenomena  of  mind  are  formed 
out  of  the  more  simple  and  elementary  by  progressive  spe- 
cialization and  integration ;  and,  secondly,  that  the  laws  by 
means  of  which  this  formation  takes  place  are  not  laws  of 
association  merely,  but  laws  of  organic  combination  and  evo- 
lution.    The  growth  of  mental  power  mean»  an  actual  addi- 


MOTOR   INTUITIONS.  29 

tion  of  structure  to  tlio  intimate  constitution  of  the  centres 
of  mind — a  mental  organization  in  them ;  and  mental  derange- 
ment means  disorder  of  them,  primary  or  secondary,  func- 
tional or  organic. 

Althougli  I  have  declared  the  liemisplicrical  ganglia  to  bo 
preeminently  the  mind-centres,  and  although  it  is  in  disorder 
of  their  functions — in  disordered  intelligence,  in  disordered 
emotion,  and  in  disordered  will — that  insanity  essentially  con- 
sists, it  is  nevertheless  impossible  to  limit  the  study  of  our 
mental  operations  to  the  study  of  them.  They  receive  im- 
pressions from  every  part  of  the  body,  and,  there  is  reason  to 
believe,  exert  an  influence  on  every  element  of  it :  there  is 
not  an  organic  motion,  sensible  or  insensible,  which  does  not, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  affect  them,  and  which  they  in 
turn  do  not  consciously  or  unconsciously  affect.  So  intimate 
and  essential  is  the  sympathy  between  all  the  organic  func- 
tions, of  which  mind  is  the  crown  and  consummation,  that  we 
may  justly  say  of  it,  that  it  sums  up  and  comprehends  the 
bodily  life — that  every  thing  which  is  displayed  outwardly  is 
contained  secretly  in  the  innermost.  We  cannot  truly  under- 
stand mind -functions  without  embracing  in  our  inquiry  all 
the  bodily  functions  and,  I  might  perhaps  without  exaggera- 
tion say,  all  the  bodily  features. 

I  have  already  shown  this  in  respect  of  motor  functions, 
by  exhibiting  how  entirely  dependent  for  its  expression  will 
is  upon  the  organized  mechanism  of  the  motor  centres — how, 
in  effecting  voluntary  movements,  it  presupposes  the  appro- 
priate education  of  the  motor  centres.  Few  persons,  perhaps, 
consider  what  a  wonderful  art  speech  is,  or  even  remember 
that  it  is  an  art  which  we  acquire.  But  it  actually  costs  us  a 
great  deal  of  pains  to  learn  to  speak ;  all  the  language  which 
an  infant  has  is  a  cry ;  and  it  is  only  because  we  begin  to  learn 
to  talk  when  we  are  very  young,  and  are  constantly  prac- 
tising, that  we  forget  how  specially  we  have  had  to  educate 
our  motor  centres  of  speech.  Here,  however,  we  come  to 
another  pregnant  consideration :  the  acquired  faculty  of  the 


30  BODY  AND  MIND. 

educated  motor  centre  is  not  only  a  necessary  agency  in^the 
performance  of  a  voluntary  act,  but  I  maintain  that  it  posi- 
tively enters  as  a  mental  element  into  the  composition  of  the 
definite  volition  ;  that,  in  fact,  the  specific  motor  faculty  not 
only  acts  downward  upon  the  motor  nerves,  thus  executing 
the  movement,  hut  also  acts  upward  upon  the  mind-centres, 
thereby  giving  to  consciousness  the  conception  of  the  suitable 
movement — the  appropriate  motor  intuition.  It  is  certain 
that,  in  order  to  execute  consciously  a  voluntary  act,  we  must 
have  in  the  mind  a  conception  of  the  aim  or  purpose  of  the 
act.  The  will  cannot  act  upon  the  separate  muscles,  it  can 
only  determine  the  result  desired ;  and  thereupon  the  com- 
bined contraction,  in  due  force  and  rapidity,  of  the  separate 
muscles  takes  place  in  a  way  that  we  have  no  consciousness 
of,  and  accomplishes  the  act.  The  infant  directly  it  is  born 
can  suck,  certainly  not  consciously  or  voluntarily ;  on  the  first 
occasion,  at  any  rate,  it  can  have  no  notion  of  the  purpose  of 
its  movements  ;  but  the  effect  of  the  action  is  to  excite  in  the 
mind  the  special  motor  intuition,  and  to  lay  the  foundation 
of  the  special  volition  of  it.  We  cannot  do  an  act  voluntarily 
unless  we  know  what  we  are  going  to  do,  and  we  cannot 
Tcnow  exactly  what  we  are  going  to  do  until  we  have  taught 
ourselves  to  do  it.  This  exact  knowledge  of  the  aim  of  the 
act,  which  we  get  by  experience,  the  motor  intuition  gives  us. 
The  essential  intervention  of  the  motor  intuition,  which 
is,  as  it  were,  the  abstract  of  the'  movement,  in  our  mental 
life,  is  best  illustrated  by  the  movements  of  speech,  but  is  by 
no  means  peculiar  to  them.  Each  word  represents  a  certain 
association  and  succession  of  muscular  acts,  and  is  itself  noth- 
ing more  than  a  conventional  sign  or  symbol  to  mark  the  par- 
ticular muscular  expression  of  a  particular  idea.  The  word 
has  not  independent  vitality  ;  it  difi'ers  in  different  languages ; 
and  those  who  are  deprived  of  the  power  of  articulate  speech 
must  make  use  of  other  muscular  acts  to  express  their  ideas, 
speaking,  as  it  were,  in  a  dumb  discourse.  There  is  no  reason 
on  earth,  indeed,  why  a  person  might  not  learn  to  express 


GESTURE   LANGUAGE.  ;}1 

every  thouglit  which  ho  can  utter  in  speech  by  movements 
of  his  fingers,  limbs,  and  body — by  the  silent  language  of  ges- 
ture. The  movements  of  articulation  have  not,  then,  a  special 
hind  of  connection  with  the  mind,  though  tlieir  connection  is 
a  specially  intimate  one  ;  they  are  simply  the  most  convenient 
for  the  expression  of  our  mental  states,  because  they  are  so 
numerous,  various,  delicate,  and  complex,  and  because,  in  con- 
junction with  the  muscles  of  the  larynx  and  the  respiratory 
muscles,  they  modify  sound,  and  thus  make  audible  language. 
Having,  on  this  account,  been  always  used  as  the  special  in- 
struments of  utterance,  their  connection  with  thought  is  most 
intimate ;  the  Greeks,  in  fact,  used  the  word  x6yos  to  mean 
both  reason  and  speech.  But  this  does  not  make  the  rela- 
tions of  the  movements  of  speech  to  mind  different  funda- 
mentally from  the  relations  of  other  voluntary  movements  to 
mind;  and  we  should  be  quite ^as  much  warranted  in  assign- 
ing to  the  mind  a  special  faculty  of  writing,  of  walking,  or  of 
gesticulating,  as  in  speaking  of  a  special  faculty  of  speech  in  it. 
"What  is  true  of  the  relations  of  articulate  movements  to 
mental  states  is  true  of  the  relations  of  other  movements  to 
mental  states  :  they  not  only  express  the  thought,  but,  when 
otherwise  put  in  action,  they  can  excite  the  appropriate 
thought.  Speak  the  word,  and  the  idea  of  which  it  is  the  ex- 
pression is  aroused,  though  it  was  not  in  the  mind  previously; 
or  put  other  muscles  than  those  of  speech  into  an  attitude 
which  is  the  normal  expression  of  a  certain  mental  state,  and 
the  latter  is  excited.  Most  if  not  all  men,  when  thinking, 
repeat  internally,  whisper  to  themselves,  as  it  were,  what  they 
are  thinking  about;  and  persons  of  dull  and  feeble  intel- 
ligence cannot  comprehend  w^hat  they  read,  or  what  is  some- 
times said  to  them,  without  calling  the  actual  movement  to 
their  aid,  and  repeating  the  words  in  a  whisper  or  aloud.  As 
speech  has  become  the  almost  exclusive  mode  of  expressing 
our  thoughts,  there  not  being  many  gestures  of  the  body 
which  are  the  habitual  expressions  of  simple  ideas,  we  cannot 
present  striking  examples  of  the  powers  of  other  movements 


32  BODY  AND   MIND. 

to  call  up  tlie  appropriate  ideas ;  yet  the  delicate  muscular 
adaptations  ■which  effect  the  accommodation  of  the  eye  to 
vision  at  different  distances  seem  really  to  give  to  the  mind 
its  ideas  of  distance  and  magnitude.  No  one  actually  sees 
distance  and  magnitude ;  he  sees  only  certain  signs  from 
which  he  has  learned  to  judge  intuitively  of  them — the  mus- 
cular adaptations,  though  he  is  unconscious  of  them,  impart- 
ing the  suitable  intuitions. 

The  case  is  stronger,  however,  in  regard  to  our  emotions. 
Yisible  muscular  expression  is  to  passion  what  language  or 
audible  muscular  expression  is  to  thought.  Bacon  rightly, 
therefore,  pointed  out  the  advantage  of  a  study  of  the  forms 
of  expression.  "For,"  he  says,  "the  lineaments  of  the  body 
do  disclose  the  disposition  and  inclination  of  the  mind  in  gen- 
eral ;  but  the  motions  of  the  countenance  and  parts  do  not 
only  so,  but  do  further  disclose  the  present  humor  and  state 
of  the  mind  or  will."  The  muscles  of  the  countenance  are 
the  chief  exponents  of  human  feeling,  much  of  the  variety  of 
which  is  due  to  the  action  of  the  orbicular  muscles  with  the 
system  of  elevating  and  depressing  muscles.  Animals  cannot 
laugh,  because,  besides  being  incapable  of  ludicrous  ideas, 
they  do  not  possess  in  sufficient  development  the  orbicular 
muscle  of  the  lips  and  the  straight  muscles  which  act  upon 
them.  It  is  because  of  the  superadded  muscles  and  of  their 
combined  actions — not  combined  contraction  merely,  but 
consentaneous  action,  the  relaxation  of  some  accompanying 
the  contraction  of  others — that  the  human  countenance  is 
capable  of  expressing  a  variety  of  more  complex  emotions 
than  animals  can.  Those  who  would  degrade  the  body,  in 
order,  as  they  imagine,  to  exalt  the  mind,  should  consider 
more  deeply  than  they  do  the  importance  of  our  muscular 
expressions  of  feeling.  The  manifold  shades  and  kinds  of 
expression  which  the  lips  present — tlieir  gibes,  gambols,  and 
flashes  of  merriment;  the  quick  language  of  a  quivering 
nostril;  the  varied  waves  and  ripples  of  beautiful  emotion 
which  play  on  the  human  countenance,  with  the  spasms  of 


MUSCULAR  EXPRESSION.  33 

passion  that  disfigure  it — all  wliicli  wc  take  such  pains  to 
embody  in  art — are  simply  effects  of  muscular  action,  and 
might  be  produced  by  electricity  or  any  other  stimulus,  if  we 
could  only  apply  it  in  suitable  force  to  the  proper  muscles. 
"When  the  eye  is  turned  upward  in  rapt  devotion,  in  the 
ecstasy  of  supplication,  it  is  for  the  same  reason  as  it  is  rolled 
upward  in  fainting,  in  sleep,  in  the  agony  of  death :  it  is  an 
involuntary  act  of  the  oblique  muscles,  when  the  straight 
muscles  cease  to  act  upon  it.  We  perceive,  then,  in  the  study 
of  muscular  action,  the  reason  why  man  looks  up  to  heaven 
in  prayer,  and  why  he  has  placed  there  the  power  "  whence 
Cometh  his  help."  A  simple  property  of  the  body,  as  Sir  C. 
Bell  observes — the  fact  that  the  eye  in  supplication  takes 
what  is  its  natural  position  when  not  acted  upon  by  the  will 
— has  influenced  our  conceptions  of  heaven,  our  religious  ob- 
servances, and  the  habitual  expression  of  our  highest  feelings. 
"Whether  each  passion  which  is  special  in  kind  has  its 
special  bodily  expression,  and  what  is  the  expression  of  each, 
it  would  take  me  too  long  to  examine  now.  Suffice  it  to  say 
that  the  special  muscular  action  is  not  merely  the  exponent 
of  the  passion,  but  truly  an  essential  part  of  it.  Fix  the 
countenance  in  the  pattern  of  a  particular  emotion — in  a 
look  of  anger,  of  wonder,  or  of  scorn — and  the  emotion 
whose  appearance  is  thus  imitated  will  not  fail  to  be  aroused. 
And  if  we  try,  while  the  features  are  fixed  in  the  expression 
of  one  passion,  to  call  up  in  the  mind  a  quite  different  one, 
we  shall  find  it  impossible  to  do  so.  This  agrees  with  the 
experiments  of  Mr.  Braid  on  persons  whom  he  had  put  into 
a  state  of  hypnotism ;  for,  when  the  features  or  the  limbs 
were  made  by  him  to  assume  the  expression  of  a  particular 
emotion,  thereupon  the  emotion  was  actually  felt  by  the  pa- 
tient, who  began  to  act  as  if  he  was  under  its  influence.  We 
perceive  then  that  the  muscles  are  not  alone  the  machinery 
by  which  the  mind  acts  upon  the  world,  but  that  their  ac- 
tions are  essential  elements  in  our  mental  operations.  The 
superiority  of  the  human  over  the  animal  mind  seems  to  be 


34  BODY  AXD  MIXD. 

essentially  connected  with  the  greater  variety  of  muscular 
action  of  which  man  is  capable :  were  he  deprived  of  the  in- 
finitely-varied movements  of  hands,  tongue,  larynx,  lips,  and 
face,  in  which  he  is  so  far  ahead  of  the  animals,  it  is  prob- 
able that  he  would  be  no  better  than  an  idiot,  notwithstand- 
ing he  might  have  a  normal  development  of  brain.* 

If  these  reflections  are  well  grounded,  it  is  obvious  that 
disorder  of  the  motor  centres  may  have,  as  I  believe  it  has, 
•  no  little  effect  upon  the  phenomena  of  mental  derangement. 
In  some  cases  of  insanity  there  are  genuine  muscular  hallu- 
cinations, just  as  there  are  in  dreams  sometimes,  when  the 
muscles  are  in  a  constrained  attitude ;  and,  w^here  the  morbid 
effects  are  not  so  marked,  there  is  good  reason  to  suppose 
that  a  searching  inquiry  along  this  almost  untrodden  path 
will  disclose  the  mode  of  generation  of  many  delusions  that 
seem  now  inexplicable. 

But  we  cannot  limit  a  complete  study  of  mind  even  by  a 
full  knowledge  of  the  functions  of  the  nervous  and  muscular 
systems.  The  organic  system  has  most  certainly  an  essential 
part  in  the  constitution  and  the  functions  of  mind.  In  the 
great  mental  revolution  caused  by  the  development  of  the 
sexual  system  at  puberty  we  have  the  most  striking  example 
of  the  intimate  and  essential  sympathy  between  the  brain  as 
a  mental  organ  and  other  organs  of  the  body.  The  change 
of  character  at  this  period  is  not  by  any  means  limited  to  the 
appearance  of  the  sexual  feelings  and  their  sympathetic 
ideas,  but,  when  traced  to  its  ultimate  reach,  will  be  found 
to  extend  to  the  highest  feelings  of  mankind,  social,  moral, 
and  even  religious.  In  its  lowest  sphere,  as  a  mere  animal 
instinct,  it  is  clear  that  the  sexual  appetite  forces  the  most 
selfish  person  out  of  the  little  circle  of  self-feeling  into  a 
wider  feeling  of  family  sympathy  and  a  rudimentary  moral 
feeling.   The  consequence  is  that,  when  an  individual  is  sexu- 

*  There  may  be  no  little  trath,  therefore,  though  not  the  entire  truth, 
in  the  saying  of  Anaxagoras,  that  man  is  the  wisest  of  animals  by  reason 
of  his  having  hands. 


ORGANIC  FUNCTIONS.  35 

filly  mutilated  at  an  early  age,  he  is  emasculated  morally  as 
well  as  physically.  Eunuchs  are  said  to  be  the  most  de- 
praved creatures  morally :  they  are  cowardly,  envious  liars, 
utterly  deceitful,  and  destitute  of  real  social  feeling.  And 
there  is  certainly  a  characteristic  variety  of  insanity  caused 
by  self-abuse,  which  makes  the  patient  very  like  a  eunuch  in 
character. 

It  has  been  affirmed  by  some  philosophers  that  there  is 
no  essential  difference  between  the  mind  of  a  woman  and 
that  of  a  man;  and  that  if  a  girl  were  subjected  to  the  same 
education  as  a  boy,  she  would  resemble  him  in  tastes,  feel- 
ings, pursuits,  and  powers.  To  my  mind  it  would  not  be  one 
whit  more  absurd  to  affirm  that  the  antlers  of  the  stag,  the 
human  beard,  and  the  cock's  comb,  are  effects  of  education ; 
or  that,  by  putting  a  girl  to  the  same  education  as  a  boy,  the 
female  generative  organs  might  be  transformed  into  male 
organs.  The  physical  and  mental  differences  between  the 
sexes  intimate  themselves  very  early  in  life,  and  declare 
themselves  most  distinctly  at  puberty :  they  are  connected 
with  the  influence  of  the  organs  of  generation.  The  forms 
and  habits  of  mutilated  men  approach  those  of  women ;  and 
women,  whose  ovaries  and  uterus  remain  from  some  cause  in 
a  state  of  complete  inaction,  approach  the  forms  and  habits 
of  men.  It  is  said,  too,  that  in  hermaphrodites  the  mental 
character,  like  the  physical,  participates  equally  in  that  of 
both  sexes.  While  woman  preserves  her  sex,  she  will  neces- 
sarily be  feebler  than  man,  and,  having  her  special  bodily 
and  mental  characters,  will  have  to  a  certain  extent  her  own 
sphere  of  activity ;  where  she  has  become  thoroughly  mas- 
culine in  nature,  or  hermaphrodite  in  mind — when,  in  fact, 
she  has  pretty  well  divested  herself  of  her  sex — then  she 
may  take  his  ground,  and  do  his  work ;  but  she  will  have 
lost  her  feminine  attractions,  and  probably  also  her  chief 
feminine  functions. 

Allowing  that  the  generative  organs  have  their  specific 
effect  upon  the  mind,  the  question  occurs  whether  each  of 


36  BODY  AXD  MIND. 

the  internal  organs  has  not  also  a  special  effect,  giving  rise  to 
particular  feelings  with  their  sympathetic  ideas.  They  are 
notably  united  in  the  closest  sympathy,  so  that,  although  in- 
sensible to  touch,  they  have  a  sensibility  of  their  own,  by 
virtue  of  which  they  agree  in  a  consent  of  functions,  and  re- 
spond more  or  less  to  one  another's  sufferings  ;  and  there  can 
be  no  question  that  the  brain,  as  the  leading  member  of  tliis 
physiological  union,  is  sensible  of,  and  affected  by,  the  con- 
ditions of  its  fellow-members.  We  have  not  the  same  oppor- 
tunity of  observing  the  specific  effects  of  other  organs  that 
we  have  in  the  case  of  the  generative  organs;  for  while 
those  come  into  functional  action  directly  after  birth,  these 
come  into  action  abruptly  at  a  certain  period,  and  thus  ex- 
hibit their  specific  effects  in  a  decided  manner.  It  may  well 
be,  however,  that  the  general  uniformity  among  men  in  their 
passions  and  emotions  is  due  to  the  specific  sympathies  of 
organs,  just  as  the  uniformity  of  their  ideas  of  external  Na- 
ture is  due  to  the  uniform  operation  of  the  organs  of  sense. 
It  is  probable  that  an  exact  observation  of  the  mental  ef-.- 
fects  of  morbid  states  of  the  different  organs  would  help  the 
inquiry  into  the  feelings  and  desires  of  the  mind  which  owe 
their  origin  to  particular  organs.  "What  are  the  psychological 
features  of  disease  of  the  heart,  disease  of  the  lungs,  disease 
of  the  liver?  They  are  unquestionably  different  in  each  case. 
The  inquiry,  which  has  never  yet  been  seriously  attempted, 
is,  without  cloubt,  a  difficult  one,  but  I  believe  that  the  phe- 
nomena of  dreams  might,  if  carefully  observed,  afford  some 
help.  The  ground-tone  of  feeling  in  a  dream,  the  background 
on  which  the  phantoms  move,  is  often  determined  by  the 
state  of  an  internal  organ,  the  irritation  of  which  awakens 
into  some  degree  of  activity  that  part  of  the  brain  with 
which  the  organ  is  in  specific  sympathy ;  accordingly  sympa- 
thetic ideas  spring  out  of  the  feeling  and  unite  in  a  more  or 
less  coherent  dream-drama.  How  plainly  this  happens  in  the 
case  of  the  generative  organs  it  is  unnecessary  to  point  out : 
exciting  their  specific  dreams,  they  teach  a  lesson  concerning 


SPECIFIC  ORGANIC  SYMPATHIES.  37 

physiological  sympathies  which,  applied  to  tlio  observation 
of  the  effects  of  otlier  organs,  may  be  largely  useful  in  the 
interpretation,  not  of  dreams  only,  but  of  the  phenomena  of 
insanity.  Dreams  furnish  a  particularly  fruitful  field  for  the 
study  of  the  specific  effects  of  organs  on  mind,  because  these 
effects  are  more  distinctly  felt  and  more  distinctly  declared 
when  the  impressions  from  the  external  senses  are  shut  out 
by  sleep.  As  tlie  stars  are  not  visible,  although  they  still 
shine,  in  the  daytime,  so  the  effects  of  an  internal  organ  may 
not  be  perceptible  during  the  waking  state  while  conscious- 
ness is  actively  engaged.  But  just  as,  when  the  sun  goes 
down,  the  stars  shine  visibly,  which  before  were  invisible, 
veiled  by  his  greater  light,  so  Avhen  active  consciousness  is 
suspended,  organic  sympathies,  which  before  were  insensible, 
declare  themselves  in  the  mind.  Perhaps  it  is  in  the  excita- 
tion of  its  sympathetic  feeling  and  ideas  by  a  disordered  organ 
during  sleep  that  we  may  discover  the  explanation  of  a  fact 
which  seems  to  be  undoubted,  and  to  be  more  than  accident- 
al— namely,  that  a  person  has  sometimes  dreamed  propheti- 
cally that  he  would  have  a  particular  internal  disease,  before 
he  consciously  felt  a  symptom  of  it,  and  has  been  afterward 
surprised  to  find  his  dream  come  true. 

It  is  natural  to  suppose  that  the  passion  which  a  particu- 
lar organ  produces  in  the  mind  will  be  that  which,  when 
otherwise  excited,  discharges  itself  specially  upon  that  organ. 
Notably  this  is  the  case  with  the  sexual  organs  and  the  pas- 
sion to  which  they  minister.  "When  we  consider  the  effects 
which  a  joyful  anticipation,  or  the  elation  of  a  present  ex- 
citement, has  upon  the  lungs — the  accelerated  breathing  and 
the  general  bodily  exhilaration  v/hich  it  occasions — we  can- 
not help  thinking  of  the  strange  hopefulness  and  the  sanguine 
expectations  of  the  consumptive  patient,  who,  on  the  edge 
of  the  grave,  projects,  without  a  shadow  of  distrust,  what  he 
will  do  long  after  he  will  have  been  "green  in  death  and  fes- 
tering in  his  shroud."  Observe  how  fear  strikes  the  heart, 
and  what  anxious  fear  and  apprehension  accompany  some 


38  BODY  AND  MIND. 

affections  of  the  heart.  Anger,  disappointment,  and  envj, 
notably  touch  the  liver ;  which,  in  its  turn,  when  deranged, 
engenders  a  gloomy  tone  of  mind  through  which  all  things 
have  a  malignant  look,  and  from  which,  when  philosophy 
avails  not  to  free  us,  the  restoration  of  its  functions  will 
yield  instant  relief.  The  internal  organs  are  plainly  not  the 
agents  of  their  special  functions  only,  but,  by  reason  of  the 
intimate  consent  or  sympathy  of  functions,  they  are  essential 
constituents  of  our  mental  life. 

The  time  yet  at  my  disposal  will  not  allow  me  to  do  more 
than  mention  the  effects  of  mental  states  on  the  intimate  pro- 
cesses of  nutrition  and  secretion.  Emotion  may  undoubtedly 
favor,  hinder,  or  pervert  nutrition,  and  increase,  lessen,  or 
alter  a  secretion ;  in  doing  which  there  is  reason  to  think 
that  it  acts,  not  only  by  dilating  or  contracting  the  vessels 
through  the  vaso-motor  system,  as  w^e  witness  in  the  blush 
of  shame  and  the  pallor  of  fear,  but  also  directly  on  the  or- 
ganic elements  of  the  part  through  the  nerves,  which,  as  the 
latest  researches  seem  to  show,  end  in  them  sometimes  by 
continuity  of  substance.  If  they  do  so  end,  it  is  difficult  to 
conceive  how  a  strong  emotion  vibrating  to  the  ultimate 
fibrils  of  a  nerve  can  fail  to  affect  for  a  moment  or  longer 
the  functions  of  the  organic  elements.  Be  this  so  or  not, 
however,  the  familiar  observations — first,  that  a  lively  hope 
or  joy  exerts  an  enlivening  effect  upon  the  bodily  life,  quiet 
and  equable  when  moderate,  but,  when  stronger,  evinced  in 
the  brilliancy  of  the  eye,  in  the  quickened  pulse  and  respira- 
tion, in  an  inclination  to  laugh  and  sing ;  and,  secondly,  that 
grief  or  other  depressing  passion  has  an  opposite  effect,  re- 
laxing the  arteries,  enfeebling  the  heart,  making  the  eye  dull, 
impeding  digestion,  and  producing  an  inclination  to  sigh  and 
weep — these  familiar  observations  of  opposite  effects  indicate 
the  large  part  which  mental  states  may  play,  not  in  the 
causation  of  all  sorts  of  disease  alone,  but  in  aiding  recov- 
ery from  them.  A  sudden  and  great  mental  shock  may,  like 
a  great  physical  shock,  and  perhaps  in  the  same  way,  par- 


INFLUENCE    OF   MIXD   OX   BODY.  39 

alyzc  for  a  time  all  the  bodily  and  mental  functions,  or  cause 
instant  death.  It  may,  again,  produce  epilepsy,  apoplexy,  or 
insanity ;  while  a  prolonged  state  of  depression  and  anxiety 
is  sometimes  an  important  agent  in  the  causation  of  chronic 
disease,  such  as  diabetes  and  heart-disease.  Can  it  be 
doubted,  too,  that  the  strong  belief  that  a  bodily  disorder 
will  be  cured  by  some  appliance,  itself  innocent  of  good  or 
harm,  may  so  affect  beneficially  the  nutrition  of  the  part  as 
actually  to  effect  a  cure  ?  To  me  it  seems  not  unreasonable 
to  suppose  that  the  mind  may  stamp  its  tone,  if  not  its  very 
features,  on  the  individual  elements  of  the  body,  inspiring 
them  with  hope  and  energy,  or  infecting  them  with  despair 
and  feebleness.  A  separated  portion  of  the  body,  so  little 
that  our  naked  eye  can  make  nothing  of  it,  the  spermatozoon 
of  the  male  and  the  ovum  of  the  female,  does  at  any  rate 
contain,  in  a  latent  state,  the  essential  characters  of  the 
mind  and  body  of  the  individual  from  whom  it  has  pro- 
ceeded; and,  as  we  are  utterly  ignorant  how  this  myste- 
rious effect  is  accomplished,  we  are  certainly  not  in  a  posi- 
tion to  deny  that  what  is  true  of  the  spermatozoon  and  ovum 
may  be  true  of  other  organic  elements.  And,  if  this  be  so, 
then  those  who  profess  to  discover  the  character  of  the  in- 
dividual in  the  character  of  the  nose,  the  hand  the  features, 
or  other  part  of  the  body,  may  have  a  foundation  of  truth 
for  speculations  which  are  yet  only  vague,  fanciful,  and  val- 
ueless. 

Perhaps  we  do  not,  as  physicians,  consider  sufficiently  the 
influence  of  mental  states  in  the  production  of  disease,  and 
their  importance  as  symptoms,  or  take  all  the  advantage 
which  we  might  take  of  them  in  our  efforts  to  cure  it.  Quack- 
ery seems  to  have  here  got  hold  of  a  truth  which  legitimate 
medicine  fails  to  appreciate  and  use  adequately.  Assuredly 
the  most  successful  physician  is  he  who,  inspiring  the  great- 
est confidence  in  his  remedies,  strengthens  and  exalts  the  im- 
agination of  his  patient :  if  he  orders  a  few  drops  of  pepper- 
mint-water with  the  confident  air  of  curing  the  disease,  will 


40  BODY  AND  MIND. 

he  not  really  do  more  sometimes  for  the  patient  than  one  who 
treats  him  in  the  most  approved  scientific  way,  hut  without 
inspiring  a  conviction  of  recovery  ?  Ceremonies,  charms,  ges- 
ticulations, amulets,  and  the  like,  have  in  all  ages  and  amoug 
all  nations  heen  greatly  esteemed  and  largely  used  in  the 
treatment  of  disease  ;  and  it  may  he  speciously  presumed  that 
they  have  derived  their  power,  not  from  any  contract  with 
the  supernatural,  hut,  as  Bacon  observes,  by  strengthening 
and  exalting  the  imagination  of  him  who  used  them.  En- 
tirely ignorant  as  we  are,  and  probably  ever  shall  be,  of  the 
nature  of  mind,  groping  feebly  for  the  laws  of  its  operation, 
we  certainly  cannot  venture  to  set  bounds  to  its  power  over 
those  intimate  and  insensible  molecular  movements  which 
are  the  basis  of  all  our  visible  bodily  functions,  any  more  than 
we  can  justly  venture  to  set  bounds  to  its  action  in  the  vast 
and  ever-progressing  evolution  of  Nature,  of  which  all  our 
thoughts  and  works  are  but  a  part.  This  much  we  do  know : 
that  as,  on  the  one  hand,  in  the  macrocosm  of  Nature,  it  is 
certain  that  the  true  idea  once  evolved  is  imperishable — that 
it  passes  from  individual  to  individual,  from  nation  to  nation, 
from  generation  to  generation,  becoming  the  eternal  and  ex- 
alting possession  of  man — so,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the  mi- 
crocosm of  the  body,  which  some  ignorantly  despise,  there 
are  many  more  things  in  the  reciprocal  action  of  mind  and 
organic  element  than  are  yet  dreamed  of  in  our  philosophy. 


LECTURE  11. 

Gentlemen  :  In  my  last  lecture  I  gave  a  general  survey 
of  the  physiology  of  our  mental  functions,  showing  how  in- 
dissolubly  they  are  bound  np  with  the  bodily  functions,  and 
how  barren  must  of  necessity  be  a  study  of  mind  apart  from 
body.  I  pointed  out  that  the  higher  mental  operations  were 
functions  of  the  supreme  nerve-centres ;  but  that,  though  of 
a  higher  and  more  complex  nature  than  the  functions  of  the 
lower  nerve-centres,  they  obeyed  the  same  physiological  laws 
of  evolution,  and  could  be  best  approached  through  a  knowl- 
edge of  them.  I  now  propose  to  show  that  the  phenomena 
of  the  derangement  of  mind  bear  out  fully  this  view  of  its  na- 
ture ;  that  we  have  not  to  deal  with  disease  of  a  metaphys- 
ical entity,  which  the  method  of  inductive  inquiry  cannot 
reach,  nor  the  resources  of  the  medical  art  touch,  but  with 
disease  of  the  nervous  system,  disclosing  itself  by  physical 
and  mental  symptoms.  I  say  advisedly  physical  and  mental, 
because  in  most,  if  not  all,  cases  of  insanity,  at  one  period  or 
other  of  their  course,  there  are,  in  addition  to  the  prominent 
mental  features,  symptoms  of  disordered  nutrition  and  secre- 
tion, of  disordered  sensibility,  or  of  disordered  motility.  N'ei- 
ther  in  health  nor  in  disease  is  the  mind  imprisoned  in  one 
corner  of  the  body ;  and,  when  a  person  is  lunatic,  he  is,  as 
Dr.  Bucknill  has  remarked,  lunatic  to  his  fingers'  ends. 

Mental  disorders  are  neither  more  nor  less  than  nervous  dis- 
eases in  which  mental  symptoms  predominate,  and  their  entire 
separation  from  other  nervous  diseases  has  been  a  sad  hin- 


42  BODY  AXD   MIND. 

derance  to  progress.  When  a  blow  on  the  head  has  paralyzed 
sensibilitj  and  movement,  in  consequence  of  the  disease  in 
the  brain  which  it  has  initiated,  the  patient  is  sent  to  the 
hospital ;  bnt  when  a  blow  on  the  head  has  caused  mental 
derangement,  in  consequence  of  the  disease  of  brain  which  it 
has  initiated,  the  patient  is  sent  to  an  asylum.  In  like  man- 
ner, one  man  who  has  unluckily  swallowed  the  eggs  of  a 
taenia,  and  has  got  a  cysticercus  in  the  brain,  may  go  to  the 
hospital ;  another  who  has  been  similarly  unlucky  goes  to  an 
asylum.  Syphilitic  disease  of  the  brain  or  its  arteries  lands 
one  person  in  an  asylum  with  mental  symptoms  predominant, 
another  in  a  hospital  with  sensory  and  motor  disorder  pre- 
dominant. The  same  cause  produces  different  symptoms,  ac- 
cording to  the  part  of  the  brain  which  it  particularly  affects. 
No  doubt  it  is  right  that  mental  derangements  should  have, 
as  they  often  require,  the  special  appliances  of  an  asylum, 
but  it  is  certainly  not  right  that  the  separation  which  is  neces- 
sary for  treatment  should  reach  to  their  pathology  and  to  the 
method  of  its  study;  So  long  as  this  is  the  case,  we  shall 
labor  in  vain  to  get  exact  scientific  ideas  concerning  their 
causation,  their  pathology,  and  their  treatment. 

Clearing,  then,  the  question  as  completely  as  possible  from 
the  haze  which  metaphysics  has  cast  around  it,  let  us  ask — 
How  comes  idiocy,  or  insanity  ?  "What  is  the  scientific  mean- 
ing of  them  ?  We  may  take  it  to  be  beyond  question  that 
they  are  not  accidents;  that  they  come  to  pass,  as  every 
other  event  in  Islature  does,  by  natural  law.  They  are  mys- 
terious visitations  only  because  we  understand  not  the  laws 
of  their  production,  appear  casualties  only  because  we  are 
ignorant  of  their  causality.  When  a  blow  on  the  head  or  an 
infl.ammation  of  the  membranes  of  the  brain  has  produced 
derangement  of  mind,  we  need  not  look  farther  for  a  cause : 
the  actual  harm  done  to  structure  is  sufficient  to  account  for 
disorder  of  function  in  the  best-constituted  and  best-developed 
brain.  But  it  is  only  in  a  small  proportion  of  cases  of  insanity 
that  we  can  discover  such  a  direct  physical  occasion  of  disease. 


IDIOCY.  43 

In  a  great  many  cases — in  more  than  half,  certainly,  and  per- 
haps in  five  out  of  six — there  is  something  in  the  nervous 
organization  of  the  person,  some  native  peculiarity,  ■which, 
however  we  name  it,  predisposes  him  to  an  outbreak  of  in- 
sanity. When  two  persons  undergo  a  similar  moral  shock, 
or  a  similar  prolonged  anxiety,  and  one  of  them  goes  mad  in 
consequence,  while  the  other  goes  to  sleep  and  goes  to  work 
and  recovers  his  equanimity,  it  is  plain  that  all  the  cooper- 
ating conditions  have  not  been  the  same,  that  the  entire 
cause  has  been  different.  What,  then,  has  been  the  differ- 
ence ?  In  the  former  case  there  has  been  present  a  most  im- 
portant element,  whicli  was  happily  wanting  in  the  latter — 
there  has  been  a  certain  hereditary  neurosis,  an  unknown  and 
variable  quantity  in  the  equation. 

Perhaps  of  all  the  erroneous  notions  concerning  mind 
which  metaphysics  has  engendered  or  abetted,  there  is  none 
more  false  than  that  which  tacitly  assumes  or  explicitly  de- 
clares that  men  are  born  with  equal  original  mental  capacity, 
opportunities  and  education  determining  the  differences  of 
subsequent  development.  The  opinion  is  as  cruel  as  it  is  false. 
What  man  can  by  taking  thought  add  one  cubit  either  to  his 
mental  or  to  his  bodily  stature  ?  Multitudes  of  human  beings 
come  into  the  world  weighted  with  a  destiny  against  which 
they  have  neither  the  will  nor  the  power  to  contend  ;  they  are 
the  step-children  of  ISTature,  and  groan  under  the  worst  of  all 
tyrannies — the  tyranny  of  a  bad  organization.  Men  differ,  in- 
deed, in  the  fundamental  characters  of  their  minds,  as  they  do 
in  the  features  of  their  countenances,  or  in  the  habits  of  their 
bodies;  and  between  those  who  are  born  with  the  poten- 
tiality of  a  full  and  complete  mental  development,  under  fa- 
vorable circumstances,  and  those  who  are  born  with  an 
innate  incapacity  of  mental  development,  under  any  circum- 
stances, there  exists  every  gradation.  What  teaching  could 
ever  raise  the  congenital  idiot  to  the  common  level  of  hu- 
man intelligence?  What  teaching  could  ever  keep  the  in- 
spired mind  of  the  man  of  genius  at  that  level? 


44  BODY  AND  MIND. 

The  congenital  idiot  is  deprived  of  his  human  birthright ; 
for  he  is  born  with  such  a  defect  of  brain  that  he  cannot 
display  anj,  or  can  only  display  very  feeble  and  imperfect 
mental  functions.  From  no  fault  of  his  own  is  he  thus  afflict- 
ed, seeing  that  he  must  be  held  innocent  of  all  offence  but 
the  offence  of  his  share  of  original  sin ;  but  it  is  nowise  so 
clear  that  it  is  not  from  some  fault  of  his  parents.  It  is  all  too 
true  that,  in  many  cases,  there  has  observably  been  a  neglect 
or  disregard  of  the  laws  which  govern  the  progress  of  human 
development  through  the  ages.  Idiocy  is,  indeed,  a  manufac- 
tured article ;  and,  although  we  are  not  always  able  to  tell 
how  it  is  manufactured,  still  its  important  causes  are  known 
and  are  within  control.  Many  cases  are  distinctly  traceable 
to  parental  intemperance  and  excess.  Out  of  300  idiots  in 
Massachusetts,  Dr.  Howe  found  as  many  as  145  to  be  the  off- 
spring of  intemperate  parents ;  and  there  are  numerous  scat- 
tered observations  which  prove  that  chronic  alcoholism  in 
the  parent  may  directly  occasion  idiocy  in  the  child.  I  think, 
too,  that  there  is  no  reasonable  question  of  the  ill  effects  of 
marriages  of  consanguinity :  that  their  tendency  is  to  pro- 
duce degeneracy  of  the  race,  and  idiocy  as  the  extremest 
form  of  such  degeneracy.  I  do  not  say  that  all  the  children 
of  such  marriages  may  not  sometimes  be  healthy,  and  some 
of  them  quite  healthy  at  other  times ;  but  the  general  and 
ultimate  result  of  breeding  in  and  in  is  to  produce  barrenness 
and  sterility,  children  of  a  low  degree  of  viability  and  of 
imperfect  mental  and  physical  development,  deaf-mutism,  and 
actual  imbecility  or  idiocy.  Again,  insanity  in  the  parent 
may  issue  in  idiocy  in  the  offspring,  which  is,  so  to  speak,  the 
natural  term  of  mental  degeneracy  when  it  goes  on  un- 
checked through  generations.  It  may  be  affirmed  with  no 
little  confidence  that,  if  the  experiment  of  intermarrying  in- 
sane persons  for  two  or  three  generations  were  tried,  the  re- 
sult would  be  sterile  idiocy  and  extinction  of  the  family. 
Certain  unfavorable  conditions  of  life  tend  unquestionably  to 
produce  degeneracy  of  the  individual ;  the  morbid  predispo- 


DEGENERATE   VARIETIES.  45 

sition  so  generated  is  tlien  transmitted  to  the  next  generation, 
and,  if  the  unfavorable  conditions  continue,  is  aggravated  in 
it;  and  thus  is  formed  a  morbid  variety  of  the  human  kind, 
which  is  incapable  of  being  a  link  in  the  line  of  progress  of 
humanity.  Nature  puts  it  under  the  ban  of  sterility,  and 
thus  prevents  the  permanent  degradation  of  the  race.  Morel 
has  traced  through  four  generations  the  family  history  of  a 
youth  who  was  admitted  into  the  asylum  at  Rouen  in  a  state 
of  stupidity  and  semi-idiocy ;  the  summary  of  which  may 
fitly  illustrate  the  natural  course  of  degeneracy  when  it  goes 
on  through  generations. 

First  generation :  Immorality,  depravity,  alcoholic  ex- 
cess and  moral  degradation,  in  the  great-grandfather,  who 
was  killed  in  a  tavern-brawl. 

Second  generation :  Hereditary  drunkenness,  maniacal  at- 
tacks, ending  in  general  paralysis,  in  the  grandfather. 

Third  generation :  Sobriety,  but  hypochondriacal  tenden- 
cies, delusions  of  persecutions,  and  homicidal  tendencies  in 
the  father. 

Fourth  generation :  Defective  intelligence.  First  attack 
of  mania  at  sixteen;  stupidity,  and  transition  to  complete 
idiocy.  Furthermore,  probable  extinction  of  the  family ; 
for  the  generative  functions  were  as  little  developed  as  those 
of  a  child  of  twelve  years  of  age.  He  had  two  sisters  who 
were  both  defective  physically  and  morally,  and  were  classed 
as  imbeciles.  To  complete  the  proof  of  heredity  in  this  case. 
Morel  adds  that  the  mother  had  a  child  while  the  father  was 
confined  in  the  asylum,  and  that  this  adulterous  child  shovred 
no  signs  of  degeneracy. 

"When  epilepsy  in  young  children  leads  to  idiocy,  as  it 
often  does,  we  must  generally  look  for  the  deep  root  of  the 
mischief  in  the  family  neurosis. 

No  one  can  well  dispute  that,  in  the  case  of  such  an 
extreme  morbid  variety  as  a  congenital  idiot  is,  we  have  to 
do  with  a  defective  nervous  organization.  We  are  still, 
however,  without  more  than  a  very  few  exact  descriptions 


46  BODY  AND  MIND. 

of  the  brains  of  idiots.  Mr.  Marshall  has  recently  examined 
and  described  the  brains  of  two  idiots  of  European  descent. 
He  found  the  convolutions  to  be  fewer  in  number,  individu- 
ally less  complex,  broader  and  smoother,  than  in  the  apes : 
"  In  this  respect,"  he  says,  "the  idiots'  brains  are  even  more 
simple  than  that  of  the  gibbon,  and  approach  that  of  the 
baboon."  The  condition  was  the  result  neither  of  atrophy 
nor  of  mere  arrest  of  growth,  but  consisted  essentially  in  an 
imperfect  evolution  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres  or  their 
parts,  dependent  on  an  arrest  of  development.  The  propor- 
tion of  the  weight  of  brain  to  that  of  body  was  extraordinarily 
diminished.  "We  learn,  then,  that  when  man  is  born  with  a 
brain  no  higher — indeed,  lower — than  that  of  an  ape,  he  may 
have  the  convolutions  fewer  in  number,  and  individually  less 
complex,  than  they  are  in  the  brain  of  a  chimpanzee  and  an 
orang;  the  human  brain  may  revert  to,  or  fall  below,  that 
type  of  development  from  which,  if  the  theory  of  Darwin  be 
true,  it  has  gradually  ascended  by  evolution  through  the 
ages. 

With  the  defect  of  organ  there  is  a  corresponding  defect 
of  function.  But  there  is  sometimes  more  than  a  simple 
defect.  A  curious  and  interesting  fact,  which  has  by  no 
means  yet  received  the  ccmsideration  which  it  deserves,  is 
that,  with  the  appearance  of  this  animal  type  of  brain  in 
idiocy,  there  do  sometimes  appear  or  reappear  remarkable 
animal  traits  and  instincts.  There  is  a  class  of  idiots  which 
may  justly  be  designated  tlieroid^  so  like  brutes  are  the  mem- 
bers of  it.  The  old  stories  of  so-called  wild  men,  such  as 
Peter  the  wild  boy,  and  the  young  savage  of  Aveyron,  who 
ran  wild  in  the  woods  and  lived  on  acorns  and  whatever  else 
they  could  pick  up  there,  were  certainly  exaggerated  at  the 
time.  These  degraded  beings  were  evidently  idiots,  who 
exhibited  a  somewhat  striking  aptitude  and  capacity  for  a 
wild  animal  life.  Dr.  Carpenter,  however,  quotes  the  case 
of  an  idiot  girl,  who  was  seduced  by  some  miscreant,  and 
who,  when  she  was  delivered,  gnawed  through  the  umbilical 


THEROID  DEGENERACY.  47 

cord  as  some  of  the  lower  animals  do.  And  Dr.  Crichton 
Brown,  of  the  "West  Riding  Asylum,  records  a  somewhat 
similar  case  in  a  young  woman,  not  an  idiot  naturally,  but 
who  had  gone  completely  demented  after  insanity.  She  had 
been  in  the  habit  of  escaping  from  home,  and  of  living  in 
solitude  in  the  woods,  feeding  upon  wild  fruits  or  what  she 
could  occasionally  beg  at  a  cottage,  and  sleeping  in  the  brush- 
wood. She  had  frequently  lived  in  this  manner  for  a  fort- 
night at  a  time.  During  one  of  these  absences  she  was 
delivered  of  twins;  she  had  sought  out  a  sheltered  hollow, 
and  there,  reverting  to  a  primitive  instinct,  gnawed  through 
the  umbilical  cord.  The  twins  were  alive  when  found  two 
days  after  birth,  but  the  mother  was  in  a  very  exhausted 
state,  having  had  no  food  or  covering  since  her  delivery. 
"  We  have  at  Salpetriere,"  says  Esquirol,  "  an  imbecile  woman, 
who  used  to  earn  a  few  sous  by  doing  rough  household 
work.  It  has  happened  on  several  occasions  that  as  soon  as 
she  got  her  sous  she  took  them  to  a  laborer,  and  gave  herself 
up  to  his  brutality ;  but  when  she  was  pregnant  she  went  no 
more  to  him." 

In  the  conformation  and  habits  of  other  idiots  the  most 
careless  observer  could  not  help  seeing  the  ape.  A  striking 
instance  of  this  kind  is  described  by  Dr.  Mitchell,  Deputy 
Commissioner  in  Lunacy  for  Scotlaud.  "  I  have  never,"  he 
says,  "  seen  a  better  illustration  of  the  ape-faced  idiot  than  in 
this  case.  It  is  not,  however,  the  face  alone  that  is  ape- 
like. He  grins,  chatters,  and  screams  like  a  monkey,  never 
attempting  a  sound  in  any  way  resembling  a  word.  lie  puts 
himself  in  the  most  ape-like  attitude  in  his  hunts  after  lice, 
and  often  brings  his  mouth  to  help  his  hands.  He  grasps 
what  he  brings  to  his  mouth  with  an  apish  hold.  His  thumbs 
are  but  additional  fingers.  He  has  a  leaping  walk.  He  has 
heavy  eyebrows,  and  short  hair  on  his  cheek  or  face.  He  is 
muscular,  active,  and  not  dwarfish.  He  sits  on  the  floor  in 
ape  fashion,  with  his  genitals  always  exposed.  He  has  filtliy 
habits  of  all  kinds.     He  may  be  called  an  idiot  of  the  lowest 


48  BODY  AND   MIXD. 

order ;  yet  there  is  a  miscliievous  brute-like  intelligence  in  his 
eye.  His  head  is  not  very  small,  its  greatest  circumference 
being  twenty  inches  and  a  half,  but  in  shape  it  strongly 
exhibits  the  ape-form  of  abnormality." 

Pinel  has  recorded  the  case  of  an  idiot  who  ^^^s  some- 
thing like  a  sheep,  both  in  respect  of  her  tastes,  her  mode  of 
life,  and  the  form  of  her  head.  She  had  an  aversion  to  meat, 
and  ate  fruit  and  vegetables  greedily,  and  drank  nothing  but 
water.  Her  demonstrations  of  sensibility,  joy,  or  trouble, 
were  confined  to  the  repetition  of  the  ill-articulated  words, 
5^,  ma^  l)ah.  She  alternately  bent  and  raised  her  head,  and 
rubbed  herself  against  the  belly  of  the  girl  who  attended 
her.  If  she  wanted  to  resist  or  express  her  discontent,  she 
tried  to  butt  with  the  crown  of  her  head ;  she  was  very  pas- 
sionate. Her  back,  her  loins,  and  shoulders,  were  covered 
with  flexible  and  blackish  hairs  one  or  two  inches  long.  She 
never  could  be  made  to  sit  on  a  chair  or  bench,  even  when  at 
meals ;  as  soon  as  she  was  placed  in  a  sitting  posture,  she 
glided  on  the  floor.  She  slept  on  the  floor  in  the  posture  of 
animals. 

There  is  now  under  care,  in  the  West  Eiding  Asylum,  a 
deformed  idiot  girl  who,  in  general  appearance  and  habits, 
has,  according  to  Dr.  Brown,  striking  features  of  resemblance 
to  a  goose ;  so  much  so,  that  the  nurses  who  received  her  de- 
scribed her  as  just  like  "  a  plucked  goose."  Her  father  died 
in  the  asylum,  and  her  mother's  sister  was  also  a  patient  in  it 
at  one  time.  She  is  four  feet  two  inches  in  height,  has  a  small 
head,  and  thin  and  scanty  hair,  so  that  the  crown  of  the  head 
is  partially  bald.  The  eyes  are  large,  round,  prominent,  and 
restless,  and  are  frequently  covered  by  the  eyelids,  as  if  by  a 
slow,  forcible  effort  at  winking.  The  lower  jaw  is  large, 
projecting  more  than  one  inch  beyond  the  contracted  upper 
jaw,  and  possesses  an  extraordinary  range  of  antero-pos- 
terior,  as  well  as  lateral,  movement ;  the  whole  configuration 
of  the  lower  part  of  the  face  having  a  somewhat  bill-like  ap- 
pearance.    The  neck  is  unusually  long  and  flexible,  and  is 


TIIEROID  IDIOCY.  40 

capable  of  being  bent  backward  so  as  actually  to  touch  tlic 
back  betv/een  the  scapuhe.  Tlie  cutis  anserina  is  general 
over  the  body,  but  is  most  marked  on  the  back  and  dorsal 
aspects  of  the  limbs,  where  it  looks  exactly  as  if  it  had  been 
just  deprived  of  feathers.  The  inferior  angles  of  the^capuhc 
stand  prominently  out,  and  moving  freely  with  the  movements 
of  the  arms  have  precisely  the  appearance  of  rudimentary 
wings.  The  girl  utters  no  articulate  sounds,  but  expresses 
pleasure  by  cackling  like  a  goose,  and  displeasure  by  hissing 
or  screeching  like  a  goose,  or  perhaps  like  a  macaw.  "When 
angry,  she  flaps  her  arms  against  her  sides  and  beats  her  feet 
upon  the  floor.  She  knows  her  own  name,  and  understands 
one  or  two  short  sentences,  such  as  "  Come  here  "  and  "  Put 
out  your  hand."  She  recognizes  the  persons  who  attend 
upon  her,  and  feed  her,  and  is  much  agitated  if  touched  by  a 
stranger.  She  cannot  feed  herself,  but  swallows  voraciously 
all  that  is  put  into  her- mouth,  showing  no  preference  for  one 
article  of  diet  over  another.  She  is  dirty  in  her  habits,  and 
no  amount  of  attention  has  improved  her  in  this  respect. 
She  is  very  fond  of  her  bath,  cackling  when  she  is  put  into  it. 
and  screeching  when  she  is  taken  out  of  it.* 

It  is  a  natural  question,  Whence  come  these  animal  traits 

*  The  following  account  of  an  itliot  in  the  Vv'estern  Counties  Idiot  Aej-- 
lum  has  been  communicated  to  me  by  Mr.  Kenton,  surgeon  to  the  Asylum  : 
She  is  between  15  and  IG  years  old,  has  a  very  small  head,  bnt  is  well  formed 
otherwise,  and  well  nourished.  She  has  little  or  no  intellect,  not  being  able 
to  speak,  and  barely  understanding  a  few  signs.  By  careful  treatment  she 
has  been  taught  to  feed  herself,  but  there  her  education  has  reached  its 
limit.  She  has  been  left  to  herself,  and  watched  with  a  view  to  observe  her 
natural  habits.  When  alone  in  the  garden,  she  chooses  a  quiet  spot  among 
the  shnxbs,  and,  sitting  down,  will  bend  forward  with  her  small  head  be- 
tween her  thighs,  and  occupy  herself  in  picking  imaginary  insects  from  the 
adjacent  parts  of  her  body,  pretending  to  pick  them  and  to  throw  them 
away.  She  will  then  w\inder  about,  and  finding  a  suitable  bough,  will 
swing  by  her  hands,  and  then  double  her  legs  over  the  branch  and  swing 
with  her  head  downward.  She  will  steal  any  thing  she  fancies,  and  hide  it 
away ;  will  suddenly  spring  upon  any  child  near  and  bite  and  scratch  it, 
and  then  in  a  moment  look  as  demure  as  if  she  had  done  nothing.  At  cer- 
tain limes  she  will  go  under  the  shrubs,  scratch  a  hole  with  her  hands  in 
3 


50  BODY  AND   MIND. 

and  instincts  in  man?  Whence  was  derived  tlie  instinct 
which  taught  the  idiot  woman  to  gnaw  through  the  umbilical 
cord  ?  Was  it  really  the  reappearance  of  a  primitive  instinct 
of  animal  nature — a  faint  echo  from  a  far-distant  past,  testi- 
fying to  a  kinship  which  man  has  almost  outgrown,  or  has 
grown  too  proud  to  acknowledge  ?  No  doubt  such  animal 
traits  are  marks  of  extreme  human  degeneracy,  but  it  is  no 
explanation  to  call  them  so ;  degenerations  come  by  law,  and 
are  as  natural  as  natural  law  can  make  them.  Instead  of 
passing  them  by  as  abnormal,  or,  worse  still,  stigmatizing 
them  as  unnatural,  it  behooves  us  to  seek  for  the  scientific 
interpretation  which  they  must  certainly  have.  When  we 
reflect  that  every  human  brain  does,  in  the  course  of  its  de- 
velopment, pass  through  the  same  stages  as  the  brains  of 
other  vertebrate  animals,  and  that  its  transitional  states  re- 
semble the  permanent  forms  of  their  brains ;  and  when  we 
reflect  farther,  that  the  stages  of  its  development  in  the 
womb  may  be  considered  the  abstract  and  brief  chronicle  of 
a  series  of  developments  that  have  gone  on  through  countless 
ages  in  Nature,  it  does  not  seem  so  wonderful,  as  at  the  first 
blush  it  might  do,  that  it  should,  when  in  a  condition  of 
arrested  development,  sometimes  display  animal  instincts. 
Summing  up,  as  it  were,  in  itself  the  leading  forms  of  the 
vertebrate  type,  there  is  truly  a  brute  brain  within  the  man's ; 
and  when  the  latter  stops  short  of  its  characteristic  develop- 
ment as  Tiuman — when  it  remains  arrested  at  or  below  the 
level  of  an  orang's  brain — it  may  be  presumed  that  it  will 
manifest  its  most  primitive  functions,  and  no  higher  functions. 

the  ground,  sit  down  upon  it  as  a  cat  does,  then  turn  round  and  carefully 
cover  the  spot  by  scraping  the  earth  over  it  with  her  hands.  She  tears  her 
clothes  up  into  strips,  and  hides  the  pieces.  Mr.  Kenton  mentions  another 
idiot  under  his  care,  who  puts  every  thing  to  his  nose  before  putting  it  into 
his  mouth.  This  he  does,  not  hastily,  but  deliberately,  examining  each 
piece  of  food  carefully  by  his  sense  of  smell.  He  greatly  dislikes  butter, 
and  will  not  eat  pie-crust  or  any  cooked  food  which  contains  butter,  and  ho 
detects  its  presence  with  certainty  by  the  sense  of  smell.  He  will  not  kiss 
any  one  till  he  has  sniffod  at  the  person  first. 


CEREBRAL  DEVELOPMENT.  51 

I  am  not  aware  of  any  other  considerations  than  tliose  just 
adduced  which  ofter  even  the  glimpse  of  an  explanation  of 
the  origin  of  these  animal  traits  in  man.  We  need  not,  how- 
ever, confine  our  attention  to  idiots  only.  Whence  come  the 
savage  snarl,  the  destructive  disposition,  the  obscene  lan- 
guage, the  wild  howl,  the  offensive  habits,  displayed  by  some 
of  the  insane?  Why  should  a  human  being  deprived  of  his 
reason  ever  become  so  brutal  in  character  as  some  do,  unless 
he  has  the  brute  nature  within  him?  In  most  large  asylums 
there  is  one,  or  more  than  one,  example  of  a  demented  per- 
son who  truly  ruminates  :  bolting  his  food  rapidly,  he  retires 
afterward  to  a  corner,  where  at  his  leisure  he  quietly  brings 
it  up  again  into  the  mouth  and  masticates  it  as  the  cow  does. 
I  should  take  up  a  long  time  if  I  were  to  enumerate  the 
various  brute-like  cliaracteristics  that  are  at  times  witnessed 
among  the  insane  ;  enough  to  say  that  some  very  strong  facts 
and  arguments  in  support  of  Mr.  Darwin's  views  might  be 
drawn  from  the  field  of  morbid  psychology.  We  may,  with- 
out much  difficulty,  trace  savagery  in  civilization,  as  we  can 
trace  animalism  in  savagery  ;  and,  in  the  degeneration  of  in- 
sanity, in  the  unlindlng,  so  to  say,  of  the  human  kind,  there 
are  exhibited  marks  denoting  the  elementary  instincts  of  its 
composition. 

It  behooves  us,  as  scientific  inquirers,  to  realize  distinctly 
the  physical  meaning  of  the  progress  of  human  intelligence 
from  generation  to  generation.  What  structural  differences 
in  the  brain  are  implied  by  it  ?  That  an  increasing  purpose 
runs  through  the  ages  and  that  "the  thoughts  of  men  are 
widened  with  the  process  of  the  suns,"  no  one  will  call  in 
question ;  and  that  this  progress  has  been  accompanied  by  a 
progressive  development  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres,  the 
convolutions  of  which  have  increased  in  size,  number,  and 
complexity,  will  hardly  now  be  disputed.  Whether  the  frag- 
ments of  ancient  human  crania  which  have  been  discovered 
in  Europe  do  or  do  not  testify  to  the  existence  of  a  barbarous 
rao^e  that  disap])eared  before  historical  time,  they  certainly 


52  BODY  AND   MIXD. 

mark  a  race  not  higher  than  the  lowest  surviving  human  va- 
riety. Dr.  Pritchard's  comparison  of  the  skulls  of  the  same 
nation  at  different  periods  of  its  history  led  him  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  present  inhahitants  of  Britain,  "  either  as  the 
result  of  many  ages  of  great  intellectual  cultivation  or  from 
some  other  cause,  have  much  more  capacious  hrain-cascs 
than  their  forefathers."  Yet  stronger  evidence  of  a  growth 
of  brain  with  the  growth  of  intelligence  is  furnished  by  an 
examination  of  the  brains  of  existing  savages.  Gratiolet  has 
figured  and  described  the  brain  of  the  Hottentot  Venus,  who 
was  nov/ise  an  idiot.  He  found  a  striking  simplicity  and  a 
regular  arrangement  of  the  convolution  of  the  frontal  lobes, 
which  presented  an  almost  perfect  symmetry  in  the  two 
hemispheres,  involuntarily  recalling  the  regularity  and  sym- 
metry of  the  cerebral  convolutions  in  the  lower  animals. 
The  brain  was  palpably  inferior  to  that  of  a  normally-de- 
veloped white  woman,  and  could  only  be  compared  with  the 
brain  of  a  white  idiotic  from  arrest  of  cerebral  development. 
Mr.  Marshall  has  also  recently  examined  the  brain  of  a  Bush- 
woman,  and  has  discovered  like  evidence  of  structural  inferi- 
ority :  the  primary  convolutions,  although  all  present,  were 
smaller  and  much  less  complicated  than  in  the  European ; 
the  external  connecting  convolutions  were  still  more  remark- 
ably defective;  the  secondary  sulci  and  convolutions  were 
everywhere  decidedly  less  developed ;  there  was  a  deficiency 
of  transverse  commissural  fibres  ;  and  in  size,  and  every  one 
of  the  signs  of  comparative  inferiority,  "it  leaned,  as  it  were, 
to  the  higher  quadrumanous  forms."  The  developmental  dif- 
ferences between  this  brain  and  the  brain  of  a  European 
were  in  fact  of  the  same  kind  as,  though  less  in  degree  than, 
those  between  the  brain  of  an  ape  and  that  of  a  man. 
Among  Europeans  the  average  weight  of  the  brain  is  greater 
in  educated  than  in  uneducated  persons ;  its  size — other  cir- 
cumstances being  equal — bearing  a  general  relation  to  the 
mental  power  of  the  individual.  Dr.  Thurnam  concludes, 
from    a    series    of    carefully-compiled    tables,    that    while 


BRAlX-WEIGnTS.  53 

tho  average  weight  of  the  brain  in  ordinary  Europeans 
is  49  oz.,  it  was  54.7  oz.  in  ten  distinguished  men;  and 
Prof.  Wagner  found  a  remarkably  complex  arrangement 
of  the  convolutions  in  the  brains  of  five  very  eminent 
men  which  he  examined.*  Thus,  then,  while  we  take  it  to 
be  well  established  that  the  convolutions  of  the  human  brain 
have  undergone  a  considerable  development  through  the  ages, 
we  may  no  less  justly  conclude  that  its  larger,  more  numer- 
ous, and  complex  convolutions  reproduce  the  higher  and  more 
varied  mental  activity  to  the  progressive  evolution  of  which 
their  progressive  increase  has  answered — that  they  manifest 
the  kind  of  function  which  has  determined  the  structure. 
The  vesicular  neurine  has  increased  in  quantity  and  in  qual- 
ity, and  the  function  of  the  increased  and  more  highly-en- 
dowed structure  is  to  display  that  intelligence  which  it  un- 

*The  following  table  is  compiled  from  Dr.  Thumarn's  paper  "On  the 
Weight  of  the  Human  Brain  "  (Journal  of  Mental  Science,  April,  1866) : 

BRAIN-WEIGHTS   OF    DISTINGUISHED   MEN. 

Ages.        Or. 

1.  Cuvier,  Naturalist 63  64.5 

2.  Abercrombie,  Physician 64  03 

3.  Spurzheim,  Physician 56  55.06 

4.  Dirichlet,  Mathematician 54  55.6 

5.  De  Moray,  Statesman  and  Courtier    ....  50  53.6 

6.  Daniel  Webster,  Statemian 70  53.5 

7.  Campbell,  Lord- Chancellor  ......  80  53.5 

8.  Chalmers,  celebrated  Preacher 67  53 

9.  Fuchs,  Pathologist 52  52.9 

10.  Gauss,  Mathematician       .......  78  52.6 

Average  of  ten  distinguished  men  ....    50-70       54^7 

Brain-weights  of  average  European  men     .       .    .   •  j  50I70       47.1 

Average  brain-weight  of  male  negroes 4-1.3 

"  "  14  congenital  idiots  (males)         .       .    42 

"  8  "  "     (females)  .        .       41.2 

Estimated  brain-weight  of  Microcephalic  idiocy  (males)  .       .    37.5 

"      (females)    .       32.5 
It  may  be  proper  to  add  that  the  average  weight  of  the  adult  male  brain 
is  10  per  cent,  greater  than  that  of  the  female— 100 :  90.    The  brains  of  the 
Hottentot,  Bushman,  and  Australian  are,  eo  far  as  observation  goes,  of  less 
weight  than  those  of  negroes. 


54  BODY  AND  MIXD. 

consciously  embodies.  The  native  Australian,  Avho  is  one  of 
the  lowest  existing  savages,  has  no  words  in  his  language  to 
express  such  exalted  ideas  as  justice,  love,  virtue,  mercy;  he 
has  no  such  ideas  in  his  mind,  and  cannot  comprehend  them. 
The  vesicular  neurine  which  should  embody  them  in  its  con- 
stitution and  manifest  them  in  its  function  has  not  been  de- 
veloped in  his  convolutions;  he  is  as  incapable  therefore  of 
tlie  higher  mental  displays  of  abstract  reasoning  and  moral 
feeling  as  an  idiot  is,  and  for  a  like  reason.  Indeed,  were  we 
to  imagine  a  person  born  in  this  country,  at  this  time,  with 
a  brain  of  no  higher  development  than  the  brain  of  an  Aus- 
tralian savage  or  a  Bushman,  it  is  perfectly  certain  that  he 
would  be  more  or  less  of  an  imbecile.  And  the  only  way,  I 
suppose,  in  which  beings  of  so  low  an  order  of  development 
could  be  raised  to  a  civilized  level  of  feeling  and  thought 
would  be  by  cultivation  continued  through  several  genera- 
tions ;  they  would  have  to  undergo  a  gradual  process  of  hu- 
manization  before  they  could  attain  to  the  capacity  of  civili- 
zation. 

Some,  who  one  moment  own  freely  the  broad  truth  that 
all  mental  manifestations  take  place  through  the  brain,  go 
on,  nevertheless,  to  straightway  deny  that  the  conscience  or 
moral  sensibility  can  be  a  function  of  organization.  But,  if 
all  mental  operations  are  not  in  this  world  equally  functions 
of  organization,  I  know  not  what  warrant  we  have  for  de- 
claring any  to  be  so.  The  solution  of  the  much-vexed  ques- 
tion concerning  the  origin  of  the  moral  sense  seems  to  lie  in 
the  considerations  just  adduced.  Are  not,  indeed,  our  moral 
intuitions  results  of  the  operation  of  the  fundamental  law  of 
nervous  organization  by  which  that  which  is  consciously  ac- 
quired becomes  an  unconscious  endowment,  and  is  then 
transmitted  as  more  or  less  of  an  instinct  to  the  next  genera- 
tion? They  are  examples  of  knowledge  which  has  been 
hardly  gained  through  the  suffering  and  experience  of  the 
race,  being  now  inherited  as  a  natural  or  instinctive  sensi- 
bility of  the  well-constituted  brain  of  the  individual.     In  the 


THE   MORAL   SENSE.  55 

iiuitter  of  our  moral  feelings  we  arc  most  truly  tlie  heirs  of 
the  ages.  Take  the  moral  sense,  and  examine  the  actions 
■which  it  sanctions  and  those  which  it  forbids,  and  thus  ana- 
lyze, or,  as  it  were,  decompose,  its  nature,  and  it  will  he  found 
that  the  actions  which  it  sanctions  are  those  which  may  be 
proved  by  sober  reason  to  be  conducive  to  the  well-being  and 
the  progress  of  the  race,  and  that  its  prohibitions  fall  upon 
the  actions  which,  if  freely  indulged  in,  would  lead  to  the 
degeneration,  if  not  extinction,  of  mankind.  And  if  we 
could  imagine  the  human  race  to  live  back  again  to  its  ear- 
liest infancy — to  go  backward  through  all  the  scenes  and 
experiences  through  which  it  has  gone  forward  to  its  present 
height — and  to  give  back  from  its  mind  and  character  at 
each  time  and  circumstance,  as  it  passed  it,  exactly  that 
which  it  gained  when  it  was  there  before — should  we  not 
llnd  the  fragments  and  exuviae  of  the  moral  sense  lying  here 
and  there  along  the  retrograde  path,  and  n  condition  at  the 
beginning  which,  whether  simian  or  hum.a.^,  \\'i\s  bare  of  aV 
true  moral  feeling  ?  "•' 

We  are  daily  witnesses  of,  and  our  daily  actions  testify 
to,  the  operation  of  that  plastic  law  of  nervous  organization 
by  which  separate  and  successive  acquisitions  are  combined 
and  so  intimately  blended  as  to  constitute  apparently  a  sin- 
gle and  undecomposable  faculty  :  we  observe  it  in  the  forma- 
tion of  our  volitions;  and  we  observe  it,  in  a  more  simple 
and  less  disputable  form,  in  the  way  in  which  combinations 
of  movements  that  liave  been  slowly  formed  by  practice  are 
executed  finally  as  easily  as  if  they  were  a  single  and  sim- 
ple movement.  If  the  moral  sense — which  is  derived,  then, 
insomuch  as  it  has  been  acquired  in  the  process  of  human 
development  through  the  ages — were  not  more  or  less  innate 
in  the  well-born  individual  of  this  age,  if  he  were  obliged  to 
go,  as  the  generations  of  his  forefathers  have  gone,  through 

*  Foster,  in  bis  "  Eesay  ou  Decision  of  Cliaracter,"  makes  this  concep- 
tion of  tlie  individual  cliaracter,  almost  in  the  words  used  ;  but  the  applica- 
tion of  it  to  the  race,  and  the  conclusion  drawn,  are  of  course  not  hiji. 


5G  BODY  AND  MIXD. 

the  elementaiy  process  of  acquiring  it,  lie  would  be  very 
much  in  the  position  of  a  person  wlio,  on  each  occasion  of 
writing  his  name,  had  to  go  through  the  elementary  steps  of 
learning  to  do  so.  The  progressive  evolution  of  the  human 
brain  is  a  proof  that  we  do  inherit  as  a  natural  endowment 
the  labored  acquisitions  of  our  ancestors ;  the  added  struct- 
ure represents,  as  it  were,  the  embodied  experience  and 
memories  of  the  race ;  and  there  is  no  greater  difficulty  in 
believing  that  the  moral  sense  may  have  been  so  formed,  than 
in  believing,  what  has  long  been  known  and  is  admitted  on 
all  hands,  that  the  young  fox  or  young  dog  inherits  as  an  in- 
stinct the  special  cunning  which  the  foxes  and  the  dogs  that 
have  gone  before  it  have  had  to  win  by  hard  experience. 

These  remarks  are  not  an  unnecessary  digression.  !Mor 
will  they  have  been  made  in  vain  if  they  serve  to  fix  in  our 
minds  the  conviction  that  the  law  of  progressive  evolution 
and  specialization  of  nerve-centres,  which  may  be  traced 
generally  from  the  first  appearance  of  nerve-tissue  in  the  low- 
est animals  to  the  complex  structure  of  the  nervous  system 
of  man,  and  specially  from  the  rudimentary  appearance  of 
cerebral  convolutions  in  the  lower  vertebrata  to  the  numer- 
ous and  complex  convolutions  of  the  human  brain,  does  not 
abruptly  cease  its  action  at  the  vesicular  neurine  of  the  hemi- 
spheres, but  continues  in  force  within  the  intimate  recesses 
of  the  mental  organization.  Moreover,  they  are  specially  to 
the  purpose,  seeing  that  they  enable  us  to  understand  in  some 
sort  how  it  is  that  a  perversion  or  destruction  of  the  moral 
sense  is  often  one  of  the  earliest  symptoms  of  mental  derange- 
ment :  as  the  latest  and  most  exquisite  product  of  mental  or- 
ganization, the  highest  bloom  of  culture,  it  is  the  first  to 
testify  to  disorder  of  the  mind-centres.  Not  that  we  can  de- 
tect any  structural  change  in  such  case ;  it  is  far  too  delicate 
for  that.  The  wonder  would,  indeed,  be  if  we  could  discover 
such  more  than  microscopical  changes  with  the  instruments 
of  research  which  we  yet  possess.  We  might  almost  as  well 
look  to  discover  the  anatomy  of  a  gnat  with  a  telescope. 


IXSANE  NEUROSIS.  57 

I  purposely  selected  for  consideration  the  defective  brain 
of  the  idiot,  because  it  exhibits  an  undeniable  fault  of  struct- 
ure, which  is  often  plainly  traceable  to  evil  ancestral  in- 
fluences. When  we  duly  consider  this,  and  reflect  that  we 
might,  if  we  chose,  arrange  a  series  of  human  brains  which 
should  present  a  regular  gradation  from  the  brain  of  an  ape 
to  that  of  a  well-developed  European,  are  we  not  fully  justi- 
fied in  supposing  that  like  unfavorable  ancestral  influences 
may  occasion  defects  in  the  constitution  or  composition  of 
the  mind-centres  which  we  are  yet  quite  unable  to  detect  ? 
We  know  nothing  of  the  occult  molecular  movements  which 
are  the  physical  conditions  of  our  mental  operations ;  we 
know  little  or  nothing  of  the. chemical  changes  which  accom- 
pany them — cannot,  in  fact,  detect  the  difterence  between 
the  nerve-element  of  a  brain  exhausted  by  exercise  and  in- 
capable of  further  function,  and  that  of  a  brain  reinvigorated 
by  sleep  and  ready  for  a  day  of  energetic  function ;  and  we 
know  nothing  of  the  intricate  connection  of  nerve-cells  in  the 
hemispheres.  It  is  plain,  then,  that  there  may  be,  unknown 
to  us  save  as  guessed  from  their  effects,  the  most  important 
modifications  in  the  molecular  activities  of  nerve-element, 
changes  in  its  chemical  composition,  and  actual  defects  in  the 
physical  constitution  of  the  nerve-centres.  Wherefore,  when 
no  appreciable  defect  is  found  in  the  brain  of  one  who  has 
had  a  strong  predisposition  to  insanity,  and  has  ultimately 
died  insane,  it  behooves  us  to  forbear  a  hasty  conclusion  that 
it  is  a  perfectly  vrell-constituted  brain.  Close  to  us,  yet  in- 
accessible to  our  senses,  there  lies  a  domain  of  Nature — that 
of  the  infinitely  little — the  operations  in  which  are  as  much 
beyond  our  present  ken  as  are  those  that  take  place  in  the 
remotest  regions  of  space,  to  which  the  eye,  Avith  all  its  aids, 
cannot  yet  reach,  and  of  which  the  mind  cannot  conceive. 

It  certainly  cannot  be  disputed  that,  when  nothing  abnor- 
mal whatever  may  be  discoverable  in  the  brains  of  persons 
who  have  a  strong  hereditary  tendency  to  insanity,  they 
often  ,eshibit  characteristic  peculiarities  iu  their  manner  of 


58  BODY  AND  MIXD. 

thought,  feeling,  and  conduct,  carrying  in  their  physiognomy, 
bodily  habit,  and  mental  disposition,  the  sure  marks  of  their 
evil  heritage.  These  marks  are,  I  believe,  the  outward  and 
visible  signs  of  an  inward  and  invisible  peculiarity  of  cerebral 
organization.  Here,  indeed,  we  broach  a  most  important  in- 
quiry, which  has  only  lately  attracted  attention — the  inquiry, 
namely,  into  the  physical  and  mental  signs  of  the  degeneracy 
of  the  human  kind.  I  do  not  mean  to  assert  that  all  persons 
whose  parents  or  blood  relatives  have  suffered  from  nervous 
or  mental  disease  exhibit  mental  and  bodily  peculiarities ; 
some  may  be  well  formed  bodily  and  of  superior  natural  in- 
telligence, the  hereditary  disposition  in  them  not  having 
assumed  the  character  of  deterioration  of  race  ;  but  it  admits 
of  no  dispute  that  there  is  what  may  be  called  an  insane 
temperament  or  neurosis^  and  that  it  is  marked  by  peculiari- 
ties of  mental  and  bodily  conformation.  Morel,  who  was  the 
first  to  indicate,  and  has  done  mucli  to  prosecute,  this  line  of 
inquiry,  looks  upon  an  individual  so  constituted  as  containing 
in  himself  the  germs  of  a  morbid  variety :  summing  up  the 
pathological  elements  which  have  been  manifested  by  his  an- 
cestors, he  represents  the  first  term  of  a  series  which,  if 
nothing  happen  to  check  the  transmission  of  degenerate  ele- 
ments from  generation  to  generation,  ends  in  the  extreme 
degeneracy  of  idiocy,  and  in  extinction  of  the  family. 

"What  are  the  bodily  and  mental  marks  of  the  insane 
temperament  ?  That  there  are  sucb  is  most  certain ;  for 
although  the  varieties  of  this  temperament  cannot  yet  be 
described  with  any  precision,  no  one  who  accustoms  himself 
to  observe  closely  will  fail  to  be  able  to  say  positively,  in 
many  instances,  whether  an  insane  person,  and  even  a  sane 
person  in  some  instances,  comes  of  an  insane  family  or  not. 
An  irregular  and  unsymmetrical  conformation  of  the  head,  a 
want  of  regularity  and  harmony  of  the  features,  and,  as  Morel 
holds,  malformations  of  the  external  ear,  are  sometimes  ob- 
served. Convulsions  are  apt  to  occur  in  early  life,  and  there 
are  tics,  grimaces,  or  other  spasmodic  movements  of  muscles 


THE   IXSAXE   TEMPERAMENT.  59 

of  face,  eyelids,  or  lips,  afterward.  Stammering  and  defects 
of  prommciation  are  also  sometimes  signs  of  the  neurosis. 
In  other  cases  there  are  peculiarities  of  the  eyes,  which, 
though  they  may  be  full  and  prominent,  have  a  vacillating 
movement,  and  a  vacantly-abstracted,  or  half-fearful,  half- 
suspicious,  and  distrustful  look.  There  may,  indeed,  bo 
something  in  the  eye  wonderfully  suggestive  of  the  look  of  an 
animal.  The  walk  and  manner  are  uncertain,  and,  though 
not  easily  described  in  words,  may  be  distinctly  peculiar. 
With  these  bodily  traits  are  associated  peculiarities  of  thought, 
feeling,  and  conduct.  Without  being  insane,  a  person  who 
has  the  insane  neurosis  strongly  marked  is  thought  to  bo 
strange,  queer,  and  not  like  other  persons.  He  is  apt  to  see 
things  under  novel  aspects,  or  to  think  about  them  under 
novel  relatiims,  which  would  not  have  occurred  to  an  ordinary 
mortal.  Punning  on  words  is,  I  am  inclined  to  think,  some- 
times an  indication  of  the  temperament,  and  so  also  that 
higlicr  kind  of  wit  which  startles  us  with  the  use  of  an  idea 
in  a  double  sense  ;  of  both  which  aptitudes  no  better  example 
can  be  given  than  that  of  Charles  Lamb.  His  case,  too,  may 
show  that  the  insane  temperament  is  compatible  with,  and 
indeed  it  not  seldom  coexists  with,  considerable  genius.  Even 
those  who  have  it  iii  a  more  marked  form  often  exliibit  re- 
markable special  talents  and  aptitudes,  such  as  an  extraor- 
dinary talent  for  music,  or  for  calculation,  or  a  prodigious 
memory  for  details,  when  they  may  be  little  better  than  im- 
becile in  other  things.  There  is,  indeed,  a  marked  instinctive 
character  in  all  thoy  think  and  do ;  they  seem  not  to  need  or 
to  be  able  to  reflect  upon  their  own  mental  states.  iVt  one 
time  unduly  elated,  at  another  time  depressed  without  ap- 
parent cause,  they  are  prone  to  do  things  diflTerently  from 
the  rest  of  the  world  ;  and  now  and  then  they  do  whimsical 
and  seemingly  quite  purposeless  acts,  especially  under  con- 
ditions of  excitement,  when  the  impulses  springing  out  of  the 
unconscious  morbid  nature  surprise  and  overpower  them. 
Indeed,  the  mental  balance  may  be  easily  upset  altogether  by 


60  BODY  AND   lllKD. 

any  great  moral  shock,  or  by  tlie  strain  of  continued  anxiety. 
A  great  physical  change  in  the  system,  too,  such  as  is  caused 
by  the  development  of  puberty,  by  the  puerperal  state,  and 
the  climacteric  change,  is  not  without  danger  to  their  mental 
stability.  The  effects  of  alcohol  on  such  persons  are  in  some 
respects  special :  it  does  not  make  them  so  much  drunk  as 
mad  for  the  time  being ;  and  I  think  it  will  be  found  in  most, 
if  not  all,  cases  of  insanity  caused  by  alcohol  that  there  has 
been  a  predisposition  to  it. 

I  have  sketched  generally  the  features  of  the  insane 
temperament,  but  there  are  really  several  varieties  of  it  which 
need  to  be  observed  and  described.  In  practice  we  meet 
with  individuals  representing  every  gradation  from  the  mild- 
est form  of  the  insane  temperament  down  to  actual  idiocy. 
These  cases  ought  to  be  arranged  in  groups  according  to  their 
affinities,  for  until  this  be  done  we  shall  not  make  much  real 
progress  toward  exact  scientific  notions  respecting  the  causa- 
tion and  pathology  of  insanity.  One  group  might  consist  of 
those  egotistic  beings,  having  the  insane  neurosis,  who  mani- 
fest a  peculiar  morbid  suspicion  of  every  thing  and  every- 
body ;  they  detect  an  interested  or  malicious  motive  in  the 
most  innocent  actions  of  others,  always  looking  out  for  an 
evil  interpretation  ;  and  even  events  they  regard  as  in  a  sort 
of  conspiracy  against  them.  Incapable  of  altruistic  reflec- 
tion and  true  sympathies,  they  live  a  life  of  solitude  and  self- 
brooding,  intrenched  within  their  morbid  self-feeling,  until  the 
discord  between  them  and  the  world  is  so  great  that  there  is 
nothing  for  it  but  to  count  them  mad.  Another  group  might 
be  made  of  those  persons  of  unsound  mental  temperament 
who  are  born  with  an  entire  absence  of  the  moral  sense, 
destitute  of  the  possibility  even  of  moral  feeling ;  they  are 
as  truly  insensible  to  the. moral  relations  of  life,  as  defi- 
cient in  this  regard,  as  a  person  color-blind  is  to  certain 
colors,  or  as  one  who  is  without  ear  for  music  is  to  the  finest 
harmonies  of  sound.  Although  there  is  usually  conjoined 
with  this  4ibsence  of  moral  sensibility  more  or  less  weakness 


MORAL   DEFECTS.  61 

of  mind,  it  does  happen  in  some  instances  that  there  is  a  rc- 
markablj  acute  intellect  of  the  cunning  type. 

The  observations  of  intelligent  prison-surgeons  are  tend- 
ing more  and  more  to  prove  that  a  considerable  proportion 
of  criminals  are  weak-minded  or  epileptic,  or  come  of  families 
in  which  insanity,  epilepsy,  or  some  other  neurosis,  exists. 
Mr.  Thompson,  surgeon  to  the  General  Prison  of  Scotland, 
has  gone  so  far  recently  as  to  express  his  conviction  that  the 
principal  business  of  prison-surgeons  must  always  be  with 
mental  defects  or  disease ;  that  the  diseases  and  causes  of 
death  among  prisoners  are  chiefly  of  the  nervous  system; 
and,  in  line,  that  the  treatment  of  crime  is  a  branch  of  psy- 
chology. He  holds  that  there  is  among  criminals  a  distinct 
and  incurable  criminal  class,  marked  by  peculiar  low  physical 
and  mental  characteristics;  that  crime  is  hereditary  in  the 
families  of  criminals  belonging  to  this  class;  and  that  this 
hereditary  crime  is  a  disorder  of  mind,  having  close  relations 
of  nature  and  descent  to  epilepsy,  dipsomania,  insanity,  and 
other  forms  of  degeneracy.  Such  criminals  are  really  movMd 
varieties,  and  often  exhibit  marks  of  physical  degeneration — 
spinal  deformities,  stammering,  imperfect  organs  of  speech, 
club-foot,  cleft-palate,  hare-lip,  deafness,  paralysis,  epilepsy, 
and  scrofula.  Moreau  relates  a  striking  case,  which  is  of  in- 
terest as  indicating  the  alliance  between  morbid  or  degenerate 
varieties,  and  which  I  may  quote  here. 

Mrs.  D ,  aged  thirty-tAvo.     Her  grandfather  kept  an 

inn  at  the  time  of  the  great  French  Revolution,  and  during 
the  Reign  of  Terror  he  had  profited  by  the  critical  situation 
in  which  many  nobles  of  the  department  found  themselves  to 
get  them  secretly  into  his  house,  where  he  was  believed  to 
have  robbed  and  murdered  them.  His  daughter,  who  was  in 
his  secrets,  having  quarrelled  with  him,  denounced  him  to 
the  authorities,  but  he  escaped  conviction  from  want  of  proofs. 
She  subsequently  committed  suicide.  One  of  her  brothers 
had  nearly  murdered  her  with  a  knife  on  one  occasion,  and 
another  brother  hanged  himself.     Her  sister  vras  epileptic, 


62  BODY  AND   MIXD. 

imbecile,  and  paroxjsmally  violent.  Ilur  daugliter,  the  pa- 
tient, after  swimming  in  the  head,  noises  in  the  ears,  flashes 
before  the  eyes,  became  deranged,  fancying  that  people  were 
plotting  against  her,  purchasing  arms  and  barricading  herself 
in  her  room,  and  was  finally  put  in  an  asylum.  Thus  there 
were,  in  different  members  of  this  family,  crime,  melancholia, 
epilepsy,  suicide,  and  mania.  Need  we  wonder  at  it  ?  The 
moral  element  is  an  essential  part  of  a  complete  and  sound 
character ;  he  who  is  destitute  of  it,  being  unquestionably  to 
that  extent  a  defective  being,  is  therefore  on  the  road  to,  or 
marks,  race  degeneracy  ;  and  it  is  not  a  matter  of  much  won- 
der that  his  children  should,  when  better  influences  do  not 
intervene  to  check  the  morbid  tendency,  exhibit  a  further  de- 
gree of  degeneracy,  and  be  actual  morbid  varieties.  I  think 
that  no  one  who  has  studied  closely  the  causation  of  insanity 
will  question  this  mode  of  production. 

I  could  not,  if  I  would,  in  the  present  state  of  knowledge, 
describe  accurately  all  the  characteristics  of  the  insane  neu- 
rosis, and  group  according  to  their  aflinities  the  cases  testify- 
ing to  its  influence.  The  chief  concern  now  with  its  morbid 
peculiarities  is  to  point  out,  first,  that  they  mark  some  inher- 
ited fault  of  brain-organization  ;  and,  secondly,  that  the  cause 
of  such  fault  is  not  insanity  alone  in  the  parent,  but  may  be 
other  nervous  disease,  such  as  hysteria,  epilepsy,  alcoholism, 
paralysis,  and  neuralgia  of  all  kinds.  Except  in  the  case  of 
suicidal  insanity,  it  is  not  usual  for  the  parent  to  transmit  to 
the  child  the  particular  form  of  mental  derangement  from 
which  he  has  suffered :  insanity  in  the^parent  may  be  epilepsy 
in  the  child,  and  epilepsy  in  the  parent  insanity  in  the  child ; 
and,  in  families  where  a  strong  tendency  to  insanity  exists, 
on«  member  may  be  insane,  another  epileptic,  a  third  may 
suffer  from  severe  neuralgia,  and  a  fourth  may  commit  sui- 
cide. The  morbid  conditions  which  affect  the  motor  nerve- 
centres  in  one  generation  seem  to  concentrate  themselves 
sometimes  upon  the  sensory  or  the  ideational  centres  in  an- 
other.    In  truth,  nervous  disease  is  a  veritable  Proteus,  dis- 


TRANSITORY  FURY.  63 

appearing  in  one  form  to  reappear  in  another,  and,  it  may  be, 
capriciously  skipping  one  generation  to  fasten  upon  the  next. 

The  different  forms  of  insanity  that  occur  in  young  cliil- 
dren — as  all  forms  of  it  except  general  paralysis  may  do — are 
almost  always  traceable  to  nervous  disease  in  the  preceding 
generation,  a  neuropathic  condition  being  really  the  essential 
element  in  their  causation.  The  cases  of  acute  mania  in  chil- 
dren of  a  few  weeks  or  a  few  years  old,  which  have  been  de- 
scribed, might  more  properly  be  classed  as  examples  of  idiocy 
with  excitement.  There  can  be  no  true  mania  until  there  is 
some  mind.  But  we  do  meet  sometimes  in  older  children 
with  a  genuine  acute  mania,  occurring  usually  in  connection 
with  chorea  or  epilepsy,  and  presenting  the  symptoms,  if  I 
may  so  express  it,  of  a  mental  chorea  or  an  epilepsy  of  the 
mind,  but  without  the  spasmodic  and  convulsive  movements 
of  these  diseases.  More  or  less  dulness  of  intelligence  and 
apathy  of  movement,  giving  the  seeming  of  a  degree  of  imbe- 
cility, is  common  enough  in  chorea,  and  in  some  cases  there 
is  violent  delirium ;  but,  besides  these  cases,  there  are  others 
in  which,  without  choreic  disorder  of  movements,  there  is  a 
choreic  mania :  it  is  an  active  delirium  of  ideas  which  is  the 
counterpart  of  the  usual  delirium  of  movements,  audits  auto- 
matic character  and  its  marked  incoherence  are  striking 
enough  to  an  ordinary  observer.  Hallucinations  of  the  spe- 
cial senses,  and  loss  or  perversion  of  general  sensibility,  usu- 
ally accompany  the  delirium,  the  disorder  affecting  the  cen- 
tres of  special  and  general  sensation,  as  well  as  the  mind-cen- 
tres. 

Between  this  choreic  mania  and  epileptic  mania  there  are 
intermediate  conditions  partaking  more  or  less  of  the  charac- 
ter of  one  or  the  other — hybrid  forms  of  a  cataleptic  nature. 
The  child  will  lie  for  hours  or  days  in  a  seeming  ecstasy  or 
trance,  with  its  limbs  rigid  or  fixed  in  a  strange  posture. 
There  may  be  apparent  insensibility  to  impressions,  while  at 
other  times  vague  answers  are  given,  or  there  is  a  sudden 
bursting  out  into  wild  shrieks  or  incoherent  raving.     If  this 


64  BODY  AND   MIXD. 

be  of  a  religious  kind,  the  cLild  is  apt  to  be  thought  by  ig- 
norant persons  to  be  inspired.  The  attacks  are  of  variable 
duration,  and  are  repeated  at  varying  intervals.  On  the  one 
hand,  they  pass  into  attacks  of  chorea;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  into  true  epileptic  seizures,  or  alternate  with  them. 

In  children,  as  in  adults,  a  brief  attack  of  violent  mania, 
a  genuine  mania  transitoria,  may  precede,  or  follow,  or  take 
the  place  of  an  epileptic  fit ;  in  the  latter  case  being  a  masked 
epilepsy.  Children  of  three  or  four  years  of  age  are  some- 
times seized  with  attacks  of  violent  shrieking,  desperate 
stubbornness,  or  furious  rage,  when  they  bite,  tear,  kick,  and 
do  all  the  destruction  they  can;  these  seizures,  which  are  a 
sort  of  vicarious  epilepsy,  come  on  periodically,  and  may 
either  pass  in  the  course  of  a  few  months  into  regular  epilepsy, 
or  may  alternate  with  it.  Older  children  have  perpetrated 
crimes  of  a  savage  and  determined  nature — incendiarism  and 
even  murder — under  the  influence  of  similar  attacks  of  tran- 
sitory fury,  followed  or  not  by  epileptic  convulsions.  It  is  of 
the  utmost  importance  to  realize  the  deep  effect  which  the 
epileptic  neurosis  may  have  on  the  moral  character,  and  to 
keep  in  mind  the  possibility  of  its  existence  when  a  savage, 
apparently  motiveless,  and  unaccountable  crime  has  been 
committed.  A  single  epileptic  seizure  has  been  known  to 
change  entirely  the  moral  character,  rendering  a  child  rude, 
vicious,  and  perverse,  who  was  hitherto  gentle,  amiable,  and 
tractable.  No  one  who  has  seen  it  can  fail  to  have  been 
struck  with  the  great  and  abrupt  change  in  moral  character 
which  takes  place  in  the  asylum  epileptic  immediately  before 
the  recurrence  of  his  fits;  in  the  intervals  between  them  he 
is  often  an  amiable,  obliging,  and  industrious  being,  but  when 
they  impend  he  becomes  sullen,  morose,  and  most  dangerous 
to  meddle  with.  Not  an  attendant  but  can  then  foretell  that 
he  is  going  to  have  his  fits,  as  confidently  almost  as  he  can 
foretell  that  the  sun  will  rise  next  day.  Morel  has  made  the 
interesting  observation,  which  is  certainly  well  founded,  that 
the  epileptic  neurosis  may  exist  for  a  considerable  period  in 


INSANE   NEUROSIS.  G5 

an  undeveloped  or  masked  form,  sliowing  itself,  not  by  con- 
vulsions, but  by  periodic  attacks  of  mania,  or  by  manifesta- 
tions of  extreme  moral  perversion,  which  are  apt  to  bo 
thought  wilful  viciousness.  But  they  are  not :  no  moral  in- 
fluence will  touch  them;  they  depend  upon  a  morbid  physical 
condition,  which  can  only  have  a  physical  cure ;  and  they 
get  their  explanation,  and  indeed  justification,  afterward, 
when  actual  epilepsy  occurs. 

The  epileptic  neurosis  is  certainly  most  closely  allied  to  the 
insane  neurosis ;  and  when  it  exists  in  its  masked  form,  af- 
fecting the  mind  for  some  time  before  convulsions  occur,  it  is 
hardly  possible  to  distinguish  it  from  one  form  of  the  insane 
neurosis.  The  difficulty  of  doing  so  is  made  greater,  inas- 
much as  epilepsy  in  tlie  parent  may  engender  the  insane 
neurosis  in  the  child,  and  insanity  in  the  parent  the  epileptic 
neurosis  in  the  child.  A  character  which  the  insane  neurosis 
has  in  common  with  the  epileptic  neurosis  is,  that  it  is  apt  to 
burst  out  in  a  convulsive  explosion  of  violence ;  that  when 
it  develops  into  actual  insanity  it  displays  itself  in  deeds 
rather  than  in  words — in  an  insanity  of  action  rather  than 
of  thought.  It  is  truly  a  neurosis  spasmodica.  Take,  for  ex- 
ample, a  case  which  is  one  of  a  class,  that  of  the  late  Alton 
murderer,  who,  taking  a  walk  one  fine  afternoon,  met  some 
little  girls  at  play,  enticed  one  of  them  into  a  neighboring 
hop-garden,  there  murdered  her  and  cut  her  body  into  frag- 
ments, which  he  scattered  about,  returned  quietly  home, 
openly  washing  his  hands  in  the  river  on  the  way,  made  an 
entry  in  his  diary,  "  Killed  a  little  girl ;  it  was  fine  and  hot ;" 
and,  when  forthwith  taken  into  custody,  confessed  what  he 
had  done,  and  could  give  no  reason  for  doing  it.  At  the  trial 
it  was  proved  that  his  father  had  had  an  attack  of  acute 
mania,  and  that  another  near  relative  was  in  confinement, 
suffering  from  homicidal  mania.  He  himself  had  been  noted 
as  peculiar;  he  had  been  subject  to  fits  of  depression,  been 
prone  to  weep  without  apparent  reason,  and  had  exhibited 
singular  caprices  of  conduct ;  and  it  had  once  been  necessary 


66  BODY  AND   MIND. 

to  watch  liim  from  fear  that  he  might  commit  suicide.  He 
was  not  insane  in  the  legal  or  the  ordinary  sense  of  the 
term,  but  he  certainly  had  the  insane  neurosis,  and  it  may  be 
presumed  confidently  that  he  would,  had  he  lived,  have  be- 
come insane. 

Those  who  have  practical  experience  of  insanity  know 
well  that  there  is  a  most  distressing  form  of  the  disease  ;  in 
which  a  desperate  impulse  to  commit  suicide  or  homicide 
overpowers  and  takes  prisoner  the  reason.  The  terrible  im- 
pulse is  deplored  sometimes  by  him  who  sufifers  from  it  as 
deeply  as  by  any  one  who  witnesses  it ;  it  causes  him  unspeak- 
able distress ;  he  is  fully  conscious  of  its  nature,  and  struggles 
in  vain  against  it ;  his  reason  is  no  further  afi'ected  than  in 
having  lost  power  to  control,  or  having  become  the  slave  of, 
the  morbid  and  convulsive  impulse.  It  may  be  that  this  form 
of  derangement  does  sometimes  occur  where  there  is  no  he- 
reditary predisposition  to  insanity,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  of  the  kind  there  is  such  a 
neuropathic  state.  The  impulse  is  truly  a  convulsive  idea, 
springing  from  a  morbid  condition  of  nerve-element,  and  it 
is  strictly  comparable  with  an  epileptic  convulsion.  How 
grossly  unjust,  then,  the  judicial  criterion  of  responsibility 
which  dooms  an  insane  person  of  this  class  to  death  if  ho 
knew  what  he  was  doing  when  he  committed  a  murder !  It 
were  as  reasonable  to  hang  a  man  for  not  stopping  by  an  act 
of  will  a  convulsion  of  which  he  was  conscious.  An  interest- 
ing circumstance  in  connection  with  this  morbid  impulse  is 
that  its  convulsive  activity  is  sometimes  preceded  by  a  feeling 
very  like  the  aura  epileptica — a  strange  morbid  sensation, 
beginning  in  some  part  of  the  body,  and  rising  gradually  to 
the  brain.  Tlie  patient  may  accordingly  give  warning  of  the 
impending  attack  in  some  instances,  and  in  one  case  was 
calmed  by  having  his  thumbs  loosely  tied  together  Avith  a 
ribbon  when  the  forewarning  occurred.  Dr.  Skae  records  an 
instructive  example  in  one  of  his  annual  reports.  The  feeling 
began  at  the  toes,  rose  gradually  to  the  chest,  producing  a 


AUK  A  EPILEPTICA.  G7 

sense  of  faintness  and  constriction,  and  then  to  the  head,  i)ro- 
ducing  a  momentary  loss  of  consciousness.  This  aura  was 
accompanied  by  an  involuntary  jerking — first  of  the  legs,  and 
then  of  the  arms.  It  was  when  these  attacks  came  on  that 
the  patient  felt  impelled  to  commit  some  act  of  violence 
against  others  or  himself.  On  one  occasion  he  attempted  to 
commit  suicide  by  throwing  himself  into  the  water;  more 
often  the  impulse  was  to  attack  others.  He  deplored  his  con- 
dition, of  which  he  spoke  with  great  intelligence,  giving  all  the 
details  of  his  past  history  and  feelings.  In  other  cases  a  feeling 
of  vertigo,  a  trembling,  and  a  vague  dread  of  something  fear- 
ful being  about  to  happen,  resembling  the  vertigo  and  mo- 
mentary vague  despair  of  one  variety  of  the  epileptic  aura, 
precede  the  attack.  Indeed,  whenever  a  murder  has  been 
committed  suddenly,  vrithout  premeditation,  without  malice, 
without  motive,  openly,  and  in  a  way  quite  different  from 
the  way  in  which  murders  are  commonly  done,  we  ought  to 
look  carefully  for  evidence  of  previous  epilepsy,  and,  should 
there  have  been  no  epileptic  fits,  for  evidence  of  an  aura  epi- 
lepUca  and  other  symptoms  allied  to  epilepsy. 

It  is  worth  while  observing  that  in  other  forms  of  insanity, 
v/hen  we  look  closely  into  the  symptoms,  there  are  not  un- 
frequently  complaints  of  strange,  painful,  and  distressing 
sensations  in  some  part  of  the  body,  which  app-ear  to  have  a 
relation  to  the  mental  derangement  not  unlike  that  which 
the  epileptic  aura  has  to  the  epileptic  fit.  Common  enough 
is  a  distressing  sensation  about  the  epigastrium :  it  is  not  a 
definite  pain,  is  not  comparable  strictly  to  a  burniug,  or 
weight,  or  to  any  known  sensation,  but  is  an  indescribable 
feeling  of  distress  to  which  the  mental  troubles  are  referred. 
It  sometimes  rises  to  a  pitch  of  anguish,  when  it  abolishes  the 
power  to  think,  destroys  the  feeling  of  identity,  and  causes 
sucli  unspeakable  suffering  and  despair  that  suicide  is  at- 
tempted or  accomplished.  In  other  cases  the  distressing  and 
indescribable  sensation  is  in  the  crown  of  the  head  or  down 
the  spine,  and  sometimes  it  arises  from  the  pelvic  organs.     In 


68  "  BODY  AXD  MIND. 

all  cases  the  patients  connect  tlieir  mental  trouble  with  it, 
regarding  it  as  the  cause  of  the  painful  confusion  of  thought, 
the  utter  inability  of  exertion,  the  distressing  ideas,  and  the 
paroxysm  of  despair.  Perhaps  they  exaggerate  its  impor- 
tance ;  but  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  writers  on  mental 
disorders,  too  exclusively  occupied  with  the  prominent  men- 
tal features,  have  not  hitherto  given  sufficient  attention  to 
these  anomalous  sensations.  We  have  been  apt  to  class  them 
as  hypochondriacal,  and  to  pass  them  over  as  of  no  special 
significance  ;  but  I  cannot  help  thinking  that,  properly  studied, 
they  may  sometimes  teach  us  more  of  the  real  nature  of  the 
particular  form  of  insanity — of  its  probable  course,  termina- 
tion, and  its  most  suitable  treatment — than  many  much  more 
obtrusive  symptoms. 

In  bringing  this  lecture  to  an  end,  I  may  fitly  point  out 
how  entirely  thus  far  the  observation  of  the  phenomena  of  de- 
fective and  disordered  mind  proves  their  essential  dependence 
on  defective  and  disordered  brain,  and  how  closely  they  are 
related  to  some  other  disordered  nervous  functions.  The  insane 
neurosis  which  the  child  inherits  in  consequence  of  its  par- 
ent's insanity  is  as  surely  a  defect  of  physical  nature  as  is 
the  epileptic  neurosis  to  which  it  is  so  closely  allied.  It  is  an 
indisputable  though  extreme  fact  that  certain  human  beings 
are  born  with  such  a  native  deficiency  of  mind  that  all  the 
training  and  education  in  the  world  will  not  raise  them  to 
the  height  of  brutes ;  and  I  believe  it  to  be  not  less  true  that, 
in  consequence  of  evil  ancestral  influences,  individuals  are 
born  with  such  a  flaw  or  warp  of  Nature  that  all  the  care  in 
the  world  will  not  prevent  them  from  being  vicious  or  crimi- 
nal, or  becoming  insane.  Education,  it  is  true,  may  do 
much,  and  the  circumstances  of  life  may  do  much ;  but  Ave 
cannot  forget  that  the  foundations  on  which  the  acquisitions 
of  education  must  rest  are  not  acquired,  but  inherited.  No 
one  can  escape  the  tyranny  of  his  organi/.ation  ;  no  one  can 
elude  the  destiny  that  is  innate  in  him,  and  which  uncon- 
sciously and  irresistibly  shapes  liis  ends,  even  when  he  he- 


TYRANNY   OF  ORGANIZATION.  69 

lieves  that  he  is  determining^  them  witli  consummate  fore- 
sight and  skill.  A  well-grounded  and  comprehensive  theory 
of  mind  must  recognize  and  embrace  these  facts  ;  they  meet 
us  every  moment  of  our  lives,  and  cannot  be  ignored  if  we 
are  in  earnest  in  our  attempts  to  construct  a  mental  science ; 
and  it  is  because  metaphysical  mental  philosophy  has  taken 
no  notice  whatever  of  them,  because  it  is  bound  by  the  prin- 
ciple of  its  existence  as  a  philosophy  to  ignore  them,  that, 
notwithstanding  the  labor  bestowed  on  it,  it  has  borne  no 
fruiis — that,  as  Bacon  said  of  it,  "  not  only  what  was  asserted 
once  is  asserted  still,  but  what  were  questions  once  are  ques- 
tions still,  and,  instead  of  being  resolved  by  discussion,  are 
only  fixed  and-fed." 


LECTURE  III. 

Gentlemex  :  In  my  last  lecture  I  showed  how  large  a 
part  in  the  production  of  insanity  is  played  by  the  hereditary 
neurosis,  and  pointed  out  the  necessity  of  scrutinizing  more 
closely  than  has  yet  been  done  the  features  of  the  different 
forms  of  mental  derangement  that  own  its  baneful  influence. 
Past  all  question  it  is  the  most  important  element  in  the 
causation  of  insanity.  It  cannot  be  in  the  normal  order  of 
events  that  a  healthy  organism  should  be  unable  to  bear  or- 
dinary mental  trials,  much  less  a  natural  physiological  func- 
tion such  as  the  evolution  of  puberty,  the  puerperal  state,  or 
the  climacteric  change.  When,  therefore,  the  strain  of  grief 
or  one  of  these  physiological  conditions  becomes  the  occa- 
sion of  an  outbreak  of  insanity,  we  must  look  for  the  root  of 
the  ill  in  some  natural  infirmity  or  instability  of  nerve-cle- 
ment. Not  until  we  apply  ourselves  earnestly  to  an  exact 
observation  and  discrimination  of  all  the  mental  and  bodily 
conditions  which  cooperate  in  the  causation,  and  are  mani- 
fested in  the  symptoms,  of  the  manifold  varieties  of  insanity, 
shall  we  render  more  precise  and  satisfactory  our  knowledge 
of  its  causes,  its  classification,  and  its  treatment.  How  un- 
scientific it  appears  when  we  reflect,  to  enumerate,  as  is  com- 
monly done,  sex  and  age  among  its  predisposing  causes  !  No 
one  goes  mad  because  he  or  she  happens  to  be  a  man  or  a 
woman,  but  because  to  each  sex,  and  at  certain  ages,  there 
occur  special  physiological  changes,  which  are  apt  to  run  into 
pathological  effects  in  persons  predisposed  to  nervous   dis- 


IIYSTEUICAL    INSANITY.  Vl 

order.  How  often  it  happens  that  a  moral  cause  of  insanity 
is  sought  and  falsely  found  in  a  state  of  mind  such  as  grief 
or  jealousy,  which  is  really  an  early  symptom  of  the  disease! 
Again,  how  vague  and  unsatisfactory  the  accepted  psycho- 
logical classification  of  insanity,  under  which  forms  of  dis- 
ease distinct  enough  to  claim  separate  descriptions  are  in- 
cluded in  the  same  class !  It  is  obvious  that  we  learn  very 
little  of  value  from  an  account  of  the  treatment  of  mania 
generally  when  there  are  included  under  the  class  diseases  so 
different  as  puerperal  mania,  the  mania  of  general  paralysis, 
syphilitic,  epileptic,  and  hysterical  mania,  each  presenting 
features  and  requiring  treatment  in  some^  degree  special. 
The  hope  and  the  way  of  advance  in  our  knowledge  of  men- 
tal disorders  lie  in  the  exact  observation  of  the  varieties  of 
the  insane  diathesis,  and  of  the  effects  of  bodily  functions 
and  disorders  upon  these  ;  in  noting  carefully  the  bodily  as 
well  as  mental  symptoms  that  characterize  the  several  forms 
of  derangement  of  mind ;  and  in  tracing  the  relations  of 
mental  to  other  disorders  of  the  nervous  system.  We  must 
aim  to  distinguish  well  if  we  would  teach  well — to  separate 
the  cases  that  exhibit  special  features  and  relations,  and  to 
arrange  them  in  groups  or  classes  according  to  their  affinities, 
just  as  we  do  habitually  with  general  paralysis,  and  as  I  did 
in  my  last  lecture  with  epileptic  mania. 

Following  this  plan,  we  might  in  like  manner  make  of 
hysterical  insanity  a  special  variety.  An  attack  of  acute 
maniacal  excitement,  with  great  restlessness,  rapid  and  dis- 
connected but  not  entirely  incoherent  conversation,  some- 
times tending  to  the  erotic  or  obscene,  evidently  without 
abolition  of  consciousness ;  laughing,  singing,  or  rhyming, 
and  perverseness  of  conduct,  which  is  still  more  or  less  cohe- 
rent and  seemingly  wilful — may  occur  in  connection  with,  or 
instead  of,  the  usual  hysterical  convulsions.  Or  the  ordinary 
hysterical  symptoms  may  pass  by  degrees  into  chronic  insanity. 
Loss  of  power  of  will  is  a  characteristic  symptom  of  hysteria 
in  all  its  Protean  forms,  and  with  the  perverted  sensations 


12  BODY  AXD  MIXD. 

and  disordered  movements  there  is  ahvays  some  degree  of 
moral  perversion.  Tliis  increases  until  it  swallows  up  the 
other  symptoms :  the  patient  loses  more  and  more  of  her 
energy  and  self-control,  becoming  capriciously  fanciful  about 
her  licalth,  imagining  or  feigning  strange  diseases,  and  keep- 
ing up  the  delusion  or  the  imposture  with  a  pertinacity  that 
might,  seem  incredible,  getting  more  and  more  impatient  of 
the  advice  and  interference  of  others,  and  indifferent  to  the 
interests  and  duties  of  her  position.  Outbursts  of  temper 
become  almost  outbreaks  of  mania,  particularly  at  the  men- 
strual periods.  An  erotic  tinge  may  be  observable  in  her 
manner  of  behavior;  and  occasionally  there  are  quasi- 
ecstatic  or  cataleptic  states.  It  is  an  easily-curable  form  of 
derangement  if  the  patient  be  removed  in  time  from  the  anx- 
ious but  hurtful  sympathies  and  attentions  of  her  family,  and 
placed  under  good  moral  control ;  but,  if  it  be  allowed  to  go 
on  unchecked,  it  will  end  in  dementia,  and  it  is  especially  apt 
to  do  so  when  there  is  a  marked  hereditary  predisposition. 

In  some  instances  we  observe  a  curious  connection  be- 
tween insanity  and  neuralgia,  not  unlike  that  which,  existing 
between  epilepsy  and  a  special  form  of  neuralgia,  induced 
Trousseau  to  describe  the  latter  as  epileptiform.  I  have  un- 
der observation  now  a  lady  who  suffered  for  some  time  from 
an  intense  neuralgia  of  the  left  half  of  the  face ;  after  the 
removal  of  a  tooth  suspected  to  be  at  the  root  of  the  mis- 
chief the  pain  ceased,  but  an  attack  of  melancholia  immedi- 
ately followed.  Griesinger  mentions  a  similar  case  of  a  gen- 
tleman under  his  care,  in  whom  a  double  occipital  neuralgia 
was  followed  by  a  melancholic  state  of  mind.  In  his  "  Com- 
mentaries on  Insanity,"  Dr.  Burrows  tells  of  a  very  eloquent 
divine  who  was  always  maniacal  when  free  from  pains  in  the 
spine,  and  sane  when  the  pains  returned  to  that  site.  And 
the  late  Sir  B.  Brodie  mentions  two  cases  of  a  similar  kind  : 
in  one  of  them  a  neuralgia  of  the  vertebral  column  alter- 
nated wnth  true  insanity.  These  cases  appear  to  be  instances 
of  tlio  transference  of  morbid  action  from  one  nerve-centre  to 


TRANSFORMATION   OF  NEUROSES.  73 

another,  such  as  Dr.  Darwin  formerly  noticed  and  commented 

on.     "  Mrs.  C ,"  he  says,  "  was  seized  every  day,  about 

the  same  hour,  with  violent  pain  in  the  right  side  of  her  bow- 
els, about  the  situation  of  the  lower  edge  of  the  liver,  with- 
out fever,  which  increased  for  an  hour  or  two,  till  it  became 
quite  intolerable.  After  violent  screaming  she  fell  into  con- 
vulsions, which  terminated  sometimes  in  fainting,  with  or 
without  stortor,  as  in  common  epilepsy ;  at  other  times  a 
temporary  insanity  supervened,  which  continued  about  half 
an  hour,  and  the  fit  ceased."  It  seems  not  unreasonable  to 
suppose  that  the  morbid  action  in  the  sensory  centres,  which 
the  violent  neuralgia  implied,  was  at  one  time  transferred  to 
the  motor  centres,  giving  rise  to  convulsive  movements,  and 
at  another  time  to  the  mind-centres,  giving  rise  to  convulsive 
ideas.  There  is  a  form  of  neuralgia  w^hich  is  the  analogue  of 
a  convulsion,  and  there  is  a  mania  which  is  the  counterpart, 
in  the  highest  nerve-centres,  of  neuralgia  and  convulsions  in 
their  respective  centres.  Perhaps  if  we  had  the  power  in 
some  cases  of  acute  insanity  to  induce  artificially  a  violent 
neuralgia,  or  general  convulsions — to  transfer  the  morbid  ac- 
tion from  the  mind-centres — we  might,  for  the  time  being  at 
any  rate,  cure  the  insanity. 

I  pass  on  now  to  exhibit  the  efiects  of  organic  sympathies 
in  the  causation  of  mental  disorders,  or  rather  the  specific 
efi'ects  of  particular  organs  upon  the  features  of  different 
forms  of  insanity.  In  my  first  lecture  I  pointed  out  that 
there  is  the  closest  physiological  consent  of  functions  be- 
tween the  difterent  organs ;  that  the  brain,  as  the  organ  of 
mind,  joins  in  this  consent ;  and  that  our  ideas  and  feelings 
are  obtained  by  the  concurrence  of  impressions  from  the 
internal  organs  of  the  body  and  the  external  organs  of  the 
senses.  The  consequence  is,  that  derangement  of  an  internal 
organ,  acting  upon  the  brain,  may  engender,  by  pathological 
sympathy,  morbid  feelings  and  their  related  ideas.  The 
mental  efi'ects  may  be  general  or  specific  :  a  general  emotional 
depression  through  which  all  ideas  loom  gloomy,  of  which 
4 


74  BODY  AND  MIND. 

every  one's  experience  testifies;  and  a  special  morbid  feeling 
with  its  particular  sympathetic  ideas,  of  which  the  phenom- 
ena of  dreaming  and  insanity  yield  illustrations. 

The  slight  shades  of  this  kind  of  morbid  influence  we  can- 
not venture  to  trace ;  but  it  is  easy  to  recognize  the  most 
marked  effects.  Take,  for  example,  the  irritation  of  ovaries 
or  uterus,  which  is  sometimes  the  direct  occasion  of  nympho- 
mania— a  disease  by  which  the  most  chaste  and  modest 
woman  is  transformed  into  a  raging  fury  of  lust.  Some  ob- 
servers have,  without  sufficient  reason  I  think,  made  of 
nympJiomania  a  special  variety,  grouping  under  the  term 
cases  in  which  it  was  a  prominent  symptom.  But  it  certainly 
occurs  in  forms  of  mania  that  are  quite  distinct — in  puerperal 
mania,  for  example,  in  epileptic  mania,  and  in  the  mania 
sometimes  met  with  in  old  women ;  and  the  cases  in  which 
it  does  occur  have  not  such  characteristic  features  as  warrant 
the  formation  of  a  definite  group.  "We  have,  indeed,  to  note 
and  bear  in  mind  how  often  sexual  ideas  and  feelings  arise 
and  display  themselves  in  all  sorts  of  insanity ;  how  they 
connect  themselves  with  ideas  which  in  a  normal  mental 
state  have  no  known  relation  to  them ;  so  that  it  seems  as 
inexplicable  that  a  virtuous  person  should  ever  have  learned, 
as  it  is  distressing  that  she  should  manifest,  so  much  obscenity 
of  thought  and  feeling.  Perhaps  it  is  that  such  ideas  are  ex- 
cited sympathetically  in  a  morbidly  active  brain  by  unrelated 
ideas,  just  as,  in  other  nervous  disorders,  sympathetic  morbid 
sensations  and  movements  occur  in  parts  distant  from  the 
seat  of  tbe  primary  irritation.  Considering,  too,  Avhat  an 
important  agent  in  the  evolution  of  mind  the  sexual  feeling 
is,  how  much  of  thought,  feeling,  and  energy  it  remotely  in- 
spires, there  is  less  cause  for  wonder  at  the  naked  interven- 
tion of  its  simple  impulses  in  the  phenomena  of  mania,  when 
coordination  of  function  is  abolished  in  the  supreme  centres, 
and  the  mind  resolved,  as  it  were,  into  its  primitive  animal 
elements.  This  should  teach  us  to  take  care  not  to  attribute 
too  hastily  the  sexual  feelings  to  a  morbid  irritation  of  the 


INSANITY   OF   PUBESCENCE.  75 

sexual  organs.  It  is  plain  that  they  may  have  a  purely  cen- 
tral origin,  just  as  the  excitation  of  them  in  health  may  pro- 
ceed from  the  mind.  Here,  in  fact,  as  in  other  cases,  ^ve 
must  bear  in  mind  the  reciprocal  influence  of  mind  on  organ, 
and  of  organ  on  mind. 

The  great  mental  revolution  whicli  occurs  at  puberty  may 
go  beyond  its  physiological  limits,  in  some  instances,  and 
become  pathological.  The  vague  feelings,  blind  longings,  and 
obscure  impulses,  which  then  arise  in  the  mind,  attest  the 
awakening  of  an  impulse  which  knows  not  at  first  its  aim  or 
the  means  of  its  gratification  ;  a  kind  of  vague  and  yearning 
melancholy  is  engendered,  which  leads  to  an  abandonment  to 
poetry  of  a  gloomy  Byronic  kind,  or  to  indulgence  in  inde- 
finite religious  feelings  and  aspirations.  There  is  a  want  of 
some  object  to  fill  the  void  in  the  feelings,  to  satisfy  the 
undefined  yearning — a  need  of  something  to  adore;  con- 
sequently, where  there  is  no  visible  object  of  worship  the 
invisible  is  adored.  The  time  of  this  mental  revolution  is,  at 
best,  a  trying  period  for  youth ;  and,  where  there  is  an  in- 
herited infirmity  of  nervous  organization,  the  natural  dis- 
turbance of  the  mental  balance  may  easily  pass  into  actual 
destruction  of  it. 

The  form  of  derangement  connected  with  this  period  of 
life  I  believe  to  be  either  a  tanciful  and  quasi-hysterical 
melancholia,  which  is  not  very  serious  when  it  is  properly 
treated ;  or  an  acute  mania,  which  is  apt  to  be  recurrent,  and 
is  much  more  serious.  The  former  occurs  especially  in  girls, 
if  it  be  not  peculiar  to  them  ;  there  are  periods  of  depression 
and  paroxysms  of  apparently  causeless  weeping,  alternating 
with  times  of  undue  excitability,  more  especially  at  the 
m.enstrual  periods ;  a  disinclination  is  evinced  to  work,  to 
rational  amusement,  to  exertion  of  any  kind  ;  the  behavior  is 
capricious,  and  soon  becomes  perverse  and  wilful ;  the  natural 
affections  seem  to  be  blunted  or  abolished,  the  patient  taking 
pleasure  in  distressing  those  whose  feelings  she  would  most 
consider  when  in  health ;  and,  although  there  are  no  fixed 


V6  BODY  AND  MIND. 

delusions,  there  are  unfounded  suspicions  or  fears  and  chan- 
ging morbid  fancies.  The  anxious  sympathies  of  those  most 
dear  are  apt  to  foster  the  morbid  self-feeling  which  craves 
them,  and  thus  to  aggravate  the  disease:  what  such  patients 
need  to  learn  is,  not  the  indulgence  but  a  forgetfulness  of 
their  feelings,  not  the  observation  but  the  renunciation  of 
self,  not  introspection  but  useful  action.  In  some  of  these 
cases,  where  the  disease  has  become  chronic,  delusions  of 
sexual  origin  occur,  and  the  patient  whose  virginity  is  intact 
imagines  that  she  is  pregnant  or  has  had  a  baby. 

The  morbid  self-feeling  that  has  its  root  in  the  sexual  sys- 
tem is  not  unapt  to  take  on  a  rehgious  guise.  We  observe 
examples  of  this  in  certain  members  of  those  latter-day  reli- 
gious sects  which  profess  to  commingle  religion  and  love,  and 
which  especially  abound  in  America.  No  physiologist  can 
well  doubt  that  the  holy  kiss  of  love  in  such  cases  owes  all 
its  warmth  to  the  sexual  feeling  which  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously inspires  it,  or  that  the  mystical  union  of  the  sexes 
lies  very  close  to  a  union  that  is  nowise  mystical,  when  it  does 
not  lead  to  madness.  A  similar  intimate  connection  between 
fanatical  religious  exaltation  and  sexual  excitement  is  exem- 
plified by  the  lives  of  such  religious  enthusiasts  as  St.  Theresa 
and  St.  Catherine  de  Sienne,  whose  nightly  trances  and 
visions,  in  which  they  believed  themselves  received  as  verita- 
ble spouses  into  the  bosom  of  Christ  and  transported  into  an 
unspeakable  ecstasy  by  the  touch  of  His  sacred  lips,  attested, 
though  they  knew  it  not,  the  influence  of  excited  sexual  or- 
gans on  the  mind.  More  extreme  examples  of  a  like  patho- 
logical action  are  afforded  by  those  insane  women  who  be- 
lieve themselves  to  be  visited  by  lovers  or  ravislied  by  perse- 
cutors during  the  night.  Sexual  hallucinations,  betraying 
an  ovarian  or  uterine  excitement,  might  almost  be  described 
as  the  characteristic  feature  of  the  insanity  of  old  maids ;  the 
false  visions  of  unreal  indulgence  being  engendered  probably 
in  the  same  way  as  visions  of  banquets  occur  in  the  dreams 
of  a  starving  jierson,  or  as  visions  of  cooling  streams  to  one 


PERIODIC   INSANITY.  77 

wlio  is  perishing  of  thirst.  It  seems  to  be  the  fact  that,  al- 
thougli  women  bear  sexual  excesses  better  than  men,  they 
suffer  more  than  men  do  from  the  entire  deprivation  of  sexual 
intercourse. 

The  development  of  puberty  may  lead  indirectly  to  insanity 
by  becoming  the  occasion  of  a  vicious  habit  of  self-abuse  in 
men ;  and  it  is  not  always  easy  to  say  in  such  cases  how  much 
of  the  evil  is  due  to  pubescence  and  how  much  to  self-abuse. 
But  the  form  of  mental  derangement  directly  traceable  to 
self-abuse  has  certainly  characteristic  features.  There  arc 
no  acute  symptoms,  the  onset  of  the  disease  being  most  grad- 
ual. The  patient  becomes  offensively  egotistic  and  impracti- 
cable ;  he  is  full  of  self-feeling  and  self-conceit ;  insensible 
to  the  claims  of  others  upon  him,  and  of  his  duties  to  them  ; 
interested  only  in  hypochondriacally  watching  his  morbid 
sensations,  and  attending  to  his  morbid  feelings.  His  mental 
energy  is  sapped;  and  though  he  has  extravagant  pretensions, 
and  often  speaks  of  great  projects  engendered  by  his  con- 
ceit, he  never  works  systematically  for  any  aim,  but  exhibits 
an  incredible  vacillation  of  conduct,  and  spends  his  days  in 
indolent  and  suspicious  self-brooding.  His  relatives  he  thinks 
hostile  to  him,  because  they  do  not  take  the  interest  in  his 
sufferings  which  he  craves,  nor  yield  suflSciently  to  his  pre- 
tensions, but  perhaps  urge  him  to  some  kind  of  work ;  he  is 
utterably  incapable  of  conceiving  that  he  has  duties  to  them. 
As  matters  get  worse,  the  general  suspicion  of  the  hostility 
of  people  takes  more  definite  form,  and  delusions  spring  up 
that  persons  speak  offensively  of  him,  or  watch  him  in  the 
street,  or  comment  on  what  passes  in  his  mind,  or  play  tricks 
upon  him  by  electricity  or  mesmerism,  or  in  some  other  mys- 
terious way.  His  delusions  are  the  objective  explanation, 
by  wrong  imagination,  of  the  perverted  feelings.  Messages 
may  be  received  from  Heaven  by  peculiar  telegraphic  signals ; 
and  there  are  occasionally  quasi-cataleptic  trances.  It  is 
strange  what  exalted  feelings  and  high  moral  and  religious 
aims  these  patients  will  often  declare  they  have,  who,  incapa- 


78  BODY  AND   MIND. 

ble  of  reforming  themselves,  are  ready  to  reform  the  world. 
A  later  and  worse  stage  is  one  of  moody  or  vacant  self-ab- 
sorption, and  of  extreme  loss  of  mental  power.  They  are 
silent,  or,  if  they  converse,  they  discover  delusions  of  a  sus- 
picious or  obscene  character,  the  perverted  sexual  passion 
still  giving  the  color  to  their  thoughts.  They  die  miserable 
wrecks  at  the  last.  This  is  a  form  of  insanity  which  certainly 
has  its  special  exciting  cause  and  its  characteristic  features  ; 
nevertheless,  I  think  that  self-abuse  seldom,  if  ever,  produces 
it  without  the  cooperation  of  the  insane  neurosis. 

The  monthly  activity  of  the  ovaries  w^hich  marks  the  ad- 
vent of  puberty  in  women  has  a  notable  effect  upon  the  mind 
and  body ;  wherefore  it  may  become  an  important  cause  of 
mental  and  physical  derangement.  Most  women  at  that 
time  are  susceptible,  irritable,  and  capricious,  any  cause  of 
vexation  affecting  them  more  seriously  than  usual ;  and 
some  who  have  the  insane  neurosis  exhibit  a  disturbance  of 
mind  which  amounts  almost  to  disease.  A  sudden  suppres- 
sion of  the  menses  has  produced  a  direct  explosion  of  insan- 
ity ;  or,  occurring  some  time  before  an  outbreak,  it  may  be 
an  important  link  in  its  causation.  It  is  a  matter  also  of  com- 
mon experience  in  asylums,  that  exacerbations  of  insanity 
often  take  place  at  the  menstrual  periods  ;  but  whether  there 
is  a  particular  variety  of  mental  derangement  connected  with 
disordered  menstruation,  and,  if  so,  what  are  its  special  fea- 
tures, we  are  not  yet  in  a  position  to  say  positively.  There  is 
certainly  a  recurrent  mania,  which  seems  sometimes  to  have, 
in  regard  to  its  origin  and  the  times  of  its  attacks,  a  relation 
to  the  menstrual  function,  suppression  or  irregularity  of 
which  often  accompanies  it ;  and  it  is  an  obvious  presump- 
tion that  the  mania  may  be  a  sympathetic  morbid  effect  of 
the  ovarian  and  uterine  excitement,  and  may  represent  an 
exaggeration  of  the  mental  irritabiUty  which  is  natural  to 
women  at  that  period.  The  patient  becomes  elated,  hila- 
rious, talkative,  passing  soon  from  that  condition  into  a  state 
of  acute  and  noisy  mania,  wliich  may  last  for  two  or  three 


RECURRENT   INSANITY.  V9 

weeks  or  longer,  and  then  sinking  into  a  brief  stage  of  more 
or  less  depression  or  confusion  of  mind,  from  which  she 
awakens  to  calmness  and  clearness  of  mind.  In  vain  we 
flatter  ourselves  with  the  hope  of  a  complete  recovery ;  after 
an  interval  of  perfect  lucidity,  of  varying  duration  in  difier- 
ent  cases,  the  attack  recurs,  goes  through  the  same  stages, 
and  ends  in  the  same  way,  only  to  he  followed  by  other  at- 
tacks, until  at  last,  the  mind  being  permanently  weakened, 
there  are  no  longer  intervals  of  entire  lucidity.  Could  we 
stop  the  attacks,  the  patient  might  still  regain  by  degrees 
mental  power;  but  we  cannot.  All  the  resources  of  our  art 
fail  to  touch  them,  and  I  know  no  other  form  of  insanity 
which,  having  so  much  the  air  of  being  curable,  thus  far  de- 
fies all  efforts  to  stay  its  course.  "We  should  be  apt  to  con- 
clude that  it  was  connected  with  the  menstrual  function, 
were  it  not  that  periodicity  is  more  or  less  the  law  of  all  ner- 
vous diseases,  that  its  attacks  often  recur  at  uncertain  inter- 
vals, and,  more  decisive  still,  that  it  is  not  confined  to  women, 
but  occurs  perhaps  as  often  in  men.  Whether  connected  or 
not,  however,  in  any  way  with  the  generative  functions,  it 
certainly  presents  features  of  relationship  to  epilepsy,  and 
occurs  where  the  insane  neurosis  exists;  and,  if  I  were  to 
describe  it  in  a  few  words,  I  should  designate  it  an  epilepsy 
of  the  mind.  Its  recurrence  more  or  less  regularly  ;  the 
uniformity  of  the  prodromata  and  of  the  symptoms  of  the 
attack,  each  being  almost  an  exact  image  of  the  other ;  its 
comparatively  brief  duration ;  the  mental  torpor  or  confu- 
sion which  follows  it,  and  the  ignorance  or  denial  sometimes, 
on  the  part  of  the  patient,  of  his  having  had  the  attack  ;  the 
temporary  recovery ;  and  the  undoubted  fact  that  it  often 
occurs  where  there  is  evidence  of  an  insane  neurosis  pro- 
duced by  epilepsy,  or  insanity,  or  both,  in  the  family ;  these 
are  facts  which  support  the  opinion  of  its  kinship  to  epilepsy. 
I  have  under  my  care  an  unmarried  lady  who  for  many  years 
has  been  subject  to  these  recurrent  attacks  of  mania,  and 
whose  intelligence  has  now  been  destroyed  by  them ;  ulti- 


80  BODY  AND  MIND. 

mately  true  epileptic  fits  supervened,  but  they  only  occur,  at 
long  intervals,  usually  not  oftener  tlian  twice  a  year,  while 
the  maniacal  attacks  recur  regularly  every  three  or  four 
weeks.  It  is  of  some  interest,  in  regard  to  the  question  of 
its  nature,  that  the  age  of  its  most  frequent  outbreak  is,  as  it 
is  with  epilepsy,  the  years  that  cover  the  development  of 
puberty.  Irregularity  or  suppression  of  menstruation  may 
or  may  not  be  present,  so  that  we  are  not  warranted  in  at- 
tributing the  disease  to  amenon-hoea  or  dysmenorrhoea ;  we  are 
the  less  warranted  in  doing  so,  as  any  form  of  insanity,  how- 
ever caused,  may  occasion  a  suppression  of  the  menses. 

The  natural  cessation  of  menstruation  at  the  change  of 
life  is  accompanied  by  a  revolution  in  the  economy  which  is 
often  trying  to  the  mental  stability  of  those  w^ho  have  a  pre- 
disposition to  insanity.  The  age  of  pleasing  is  past,  but  not 
always  the  desire,  which,  indeed,  sometimes  grows  then  more 
exacting;  there  are  all  sorts  of  anomalous  sensations  of  bod- 
ily distress,  attesting  the  disturbance  of  circulation  and  of 
nerve  functions;  and  it  is  now  that  an  insane  jealousy  and  a 
propensity  to  stimulants  are  apt  to  appear,  especially  where 
there  have  been  no  children.  "When  positive  insanity  breaks 
out,  it  usually  has  the  form  of  profound  melancholia,  with 
vague  delusions  of  an  extreme  character,  as  that  the  world  is 
in  flames,  that  it  is  turned  upside  down,  that  every  thing  is 
changed,  or  that  some  very  dreadful  but  undefined  calamity 
has  happened  or  is  about  to  happen.  The  countenance  has 
the  expression  of  a  vague  terror  and  apprehension.  In  some 
cases  short  and  transient  paroxysms  of  excitement  break  the 
melancholy  gloom.  These  usually  occur  at  the  menstrual 
periods,  and  may  continue  to  do  so  for  some  time  after  the 
function  has  ceased.  It  is  not  an  unfavorable  form  of  in- 
sanity as  regards  probability  of  recovery  under  suitable  treat- 
ment. 

Continuing  the  consideration  of  tlie  influence  of  the  gen- 
erative organs  in  the  production  of  insanity,  I  come  now  to 
puerperal  insanity.     Under  this  name  are  sometimes  con- 


PUERPERAL   INSANITY.  81 

founded  three  distinct  varieties  of  disease — that  which  occurs 
during  pregnancy,  that  which  follows  parturition  and  is 
properly  puerperal,  and  that  which  comes  on  months  after- 
ward during  lactation/''  The  insanity  of  pregnancy  is,  as  a 
rule,  of  a  marked  melancholic  type,  with  suicidal  tendency ; 
a  degree  of  mental  weakness  or  apparent  dementia  being 
sometimes  conjoined  with  it.  Other  cases,  however,  exhibit 
much  moral  perversion,  perhaps  an  uncontrollable  craving 
for  stimulants,  which  we  may  regard  as  an  exaggerated  display 
of  the  fanciful  cravings  from  which  women  suffer  in  the 
earlier  months  of  pregnancy.  We  can  hardly  fail,  indeed,  to 
recognize  a  connection  between  the  features  of  this  form  of 
insanity  and  the  strange  longings,  the  capriciousness,  and  the 
morbid  fears,  of  the  pregnant  woman.  The  patient  may  be 
treated  successfully  by  removal  from  home ;  but,  if  the  dis- 
ease be  allowed  to  go  on,  there  is  no  good  ground  to  expect 
that  parturition  will  have  a  beneficial  effect  upon  it ;  on  the 
contrary,  the  probability  is,  that  it  will  run  into  a  severe  puer- 
peral insanity,  and  from  that  into  dementia. 

Puerperal  insanity  proper  comes  on  within  one  month  of 
parturition ;  and,  like  the  insanity  of  pregnancy,  occurs  most 
often  in  primiparffi.  The  statistics  of  the  Edinburgh  Asylum 
show  that  in  all  the  cases  occurring  before  the  sixteenth  day 
after  labor,  as  most  cases  do,  the  symptoms  Avere  those  of 
acute  mania ;  but  in  all  the  cases  which  occurred  after  the 
sixteenth  day  they  were  those  of  melancholia.  In  both  forms, 
but  especially  in  the  latter,  there  is  sometimes  a  mixture  of 
childishness  and  apparent  dementia.  The  mania  is  more 
likely  than  the  melancholia  to  get  well.  It  is  of  an  acute  and 
extremely  incoherent  character,  a  delirious  rather  than  a  sys- 
tematized mania,  marked  by  noisy  restlessness,  sleeplessness, 
tearing  of  clothes,  hallucinations,  and  in  some  cases  by  great 
salacity,  which  is  probably  the  direct  mental  effect  of  the  irri- 
tation of  the  generative  organs.     Suicide  may  be  attempted 

*  "  The  Insanity  of  Pregnancy,  Puerperal  Insanity,  and  Insanity  ol 
Lactation,"    By  J.  Batty  Tuke,  M.  D. 


82  BODY  AND  MIXD. 

in  an  excited,  purposeless  way.  The  bodily  symptoms,  con- 
tradicting the  violence  of  the  mental  excitement,  indicate 
feebleness ;  the  features  are  pinched ;  the  skin  is  pale,  cold, 
and  clammy ;  and  the  pulse  is  quick,  small,  and  irritable. 
We  may  safely  say  that  recovery  takes  place  in  three  out  of 
four  cases  of  puerperal  mania,  usually  in  a  few  weeks ;  the 
patient,  after  the  acute  symptoms  have  subsided,  sinking  into 
a  temporary  state  of  confusion  and  feebleness  of  mind,  and 
then  waking  up  as  from  a  dream.  I  may  add  the  expression 
of  a  conviction  that  no  good,  but  rather  harm,  is  done  by 
attempting  to  stifle  this  or  any  other  form  of  acute  insanity 
by  the  administration  of  large  doses  of  opium. 

The  insanity  of  lactation  does  not  come  under  the  scheme 
of  this  lecture ;  for  it  is  an  asthenic  insanity,  produced  by 
bodily  exhaustion  and  the  depression  of  mental  worries.  The 
time  of  its  occurrence  seems  to  show  that  the  longer  the 
child  is  suckled  the  greater  is  the  liability  to  it ;  and  in  the 
majority  of  cases  it  has  the  form  of  melancholia,  often  with 
determined  suicidal  tendency. 

So  frequently  is  hereditary  predisposition  more  or  less 
distinctly  traceable  in  these  three  forms  of  insanity  occurring 
in  connection  with  child-bearing,  that  we  are  warranted  in 
declaring  it  quite  exceptional  for  any  one  of  them  to  be  met 
with  where  it  is  entirely  absent. 

I  have  now  enumerated  all  the  forms  of  insanity  which, 
being  specially  connected  with  the  generative  organs,  pre- 
sent characteristic  features.  It  is  certain,  however,  that  dis- 
ease of  them  may  act  as  a  powerful  cooperating  cause  in  the 
production  of  insanity,  without  giving  rise,  so  far  as  we 
know,  to  a  special  group  of  symptoms.  Thus,  for  example, 
melancholia,  distinguishable  by  no  feature  from  melancholia 
otherwise  caused,  may  be  the  eftect  of  disease  of  the  uterus. 
Schroder  van  der  Kolk  mentions  the  case  of  a  woman  pro- 
foundly melancholic  who  suffered  from  prolapsus  uteri,  and 
in  whom  the  melancholia  disappeared  when  the  uterus  was 
returned  to  its  proper  place.     Flemming  relates  two  similar 


SYMPATHETIC  INSANITY.  83 

cases  in  which  melancholia  was  cured  by  the  use  of  a  pessary, 
the  depression  returning  in  one  of  them  wlienever  the  pessary 
was  removed ;  and  I  have  met  with  one  case  in  which  pro- 
found melancholia  of  two  years'  standing  disappeared  after 
the  removal  of  a  prolapsus  uteri.  Other  diseases  and  dis- 
placements of  the  uterus  may  act  in  a  similar  way. 

Let  me  now  say  a  few  words  concerning  the  abdominal 
organs.  No  one  will  call  in  question  that  the  states  of  their 
functions  do  exert  a  positive  influence  on  our  states  of  mind ; 
but  it  is  unfortunately  too  true  that  we  cannot  yet  refer  any 
special  mental  symptoms  to  the  influence  of  the  abdominal 
organs.  I  have  met  with  one  case  of  severe  melancholia,  of 
long  standing,  which  was  distinctly  cured  by  the  expulsion 
of  a  tape-worm ;  and  it  appears  to  be  tolerably  certain  that 
hypochondriacal  insanity  is  in  some  instances  connected 
with,  if  not  caused  by,  a  perverted  sensation  proceeding  from 
an  internal  organ,  most  often  abdominal.  In  health  we  are 
not  conscious  of  the  impressions  which  these  organs  make 
upon  the  brain,  albeit  they  assuredly  send  their  unperceived 
contributions  to  the  stream  of  energies  of  which  conscious- 
ness is  the  sum  and  the  outcome ;  but,  when  a  disordered  or- 
gan sends  a  morbid  impression  to  the  brain,  it  no  longer  does 
its  work  there  in  silence  and  self-suppression,  but  asserts 
itself  in  an  unwonted  aflfection  of  consciousness.  The  hypo- 
chondriac cannot  withdraw  his  attention  from  the  morbid 
sensation  to  which  it  is  irresistibly  attracted,  and  which  it 
aggravates;  his  interest  in  all  things  else  is  gradually 
quenched,  and  his  ability  to  think  and  act  freely  in  the  rela- 
tions of  life  sapped.  The  step  from  this  state  to  positive  in- 
sanity is  not  a  great  one  :  the  strange  and  distressing  sensation, 
being  so  anomalous,  so  unlike  any  thing  of  which  the  patient 
has  had  experience,  affecting  him  so  powerfully  and  so  unac- 
countably, gets  at  last  an  interpretation  that  seems  suited  to 
its  extraordinary  character;  and  he  then  imagines  that  some 
animal  or  man  or  devil  has  got  inside  him  and  is  tormenting 
him.     He  has  now  a  hallucination  of  the  organic  sense  which 


84  BODY  AXD  MIXD. 

dominates  his  thoughts,  and  he  is  truly  insane.  Not  long  since 
I  saw  a  patient  who  believed  that  he  had  a  man  in  his  belly  ; 
when  his  bowels  were  constipated,  the  delusion  became  active, 
he  made  desperate  efforts  by  vomiting  to  get  rid  of  his  torment- 
or, and  was  then  surly,  morose,  and  dangerous;  but,  when 
his  bowels  had  been  relieved,  the  delusion  subsided  into  the 
background,  and  he  was  good-tempered  and  industrious.  If 
a  patient,  instead  of  attributing  his  sufferings  to  an  absurdly 
impossible  cause,  ascribes  them  to  a  serious  internal  disease 
which  he  certainly  has  not  got,  there  will  be  a  difficulty  in 
deciding  whether  he  is  insane  or  not,  should  he  do  injury  to 
himself  or  others,  as  hypochondriacal  melancholies  sometimes 
do.  It  is  a  probable  surmise  that  in  those  cases  of  insanity  in 
which  there  are  such  delusions  as  that  food  will  not  enter 
the  stomach,  that  there  is  no  digestion,  that  the  intestines 
are  sealed  up,  there  is  a  cause  in  a  morbid  irritation  ascend- 
ing from  the  viscera  to  the  brain.  I  am  furthermore  dis- 
posed to  think  that  a  form  of  fearful  melancholia  in  which 
the  patient  evinces  an  extreme  morbid  sensitiveness  to  his 
every  thought,  feeling,  and  act,  in  which  he  is,  as  it  were, 
hypochondriacally  distressed  about  whatever  he  thinks,  feels, 
and  does,  imagining  it,  however  trivial  and  innocent,  to  be  a 
great  sin,  which  has  cost  him  his  happiness  in  time  and  eter- 
nity, has  its  foundation  in  certain  morbid  states  of  abdominal 
sensation.  In  cases  of  this  sort,  the  delusion  is  not  the  cause 
of  the  feeling  of  despair,  but  is,  as  it  were,  a  condensation 
from  it,  and  an  attempted  interpretation  of  it.  The  same 
thing  is  observed  in  dreams  :  the  images  and  events  of  a  dis- 
tressing dream  are  not  the  causes  of  the  feelings,  but  are 
caused  by  them ;  they  undergo  strange  and  sudden  meta- 
morphoses without  causing  much  or  any  surprise,  and  they 
disappear  together  with  the  terror  the  moment  we  awake, 
which  would  not  be  the  case  if  they  really  caused  tlie  terror. 
"We  perceive,  indeed,  in  this  generation  of  the  image  out  of 
the  feeling,  the  demonstration  of  the  true  nature  of  ghosts 
and  apparitions;    the  nervous  system  being  in  an  excited 


PANPHOBIA.  85 

state  of  expectant  fear,  and  the  images  being  the  eflects  and 
exponents  of  the  feeling:  they  give  tlie  vague  terror  form. 
Accordingly,  as  Coleridge  has  remarked,  those  who  see  a 
ghost  under  such  circumstances  do  not  sufior  much  in  conse- 
quence, though  in  telling  the  story  they  will  perhaps  say  that 
their  hair  stood  on  end,  and  that  they  were  in  an  agony  of  terror ; 
whereas  those  who  have  been  really  frightened  by  a  figure 
dressed  up  as  a  ghost  have  often  suffered  seriously  from  the 
shock,  having  fainted,  or  had  a  fit,  or  gone  mad.  In  like  man- 
ner, if  an  insane  person  actually  saw  the  dreadful  things  which 
he  imagines  that  he  sees  sometimes,  and  really  thought  the  ter- 
rible thoughts  which  he  imagines  he  thinks,  he  would  suffer  in 
health  more  than  he  does,  if  he  did  not  actually  die  of  them. 
I  come  now  to  the  thoracic  organs.  The  heart  and 
the  lungs  are  closely  connected  in  their  functions,  so  that 
they  mutually  affect  one  another.  Some  diseases  of  the 
lungs  greatly  oppress  and  trouble  the  heart ;  yet  there  is 
reason  to  believe  that  they  have  their  special  effects  upon 
the  mind.  How,  indeed,  can  we  think  otherwise  when  we 
contrast  the  sanguine  confidence  of  the  consumptive  patient 
with  the  anxious  fear  and  apprehension  exhibited  in  some 
diseases  of  the  heart  ?  It  used  to  be  said  that  disease  of  the 
heart  was  more  frequent  among  the  insane  than  among  the 
sane;  but  the  latest  observations  do  not  afford  any  support 
to  the  opinion,  nor  do  they  furnish  valid  grounds  to  connect 
a  particular  variety  of  insanity  with  heart-disease  in  those 
cases  in  which  it  does  exist.  All  that  we  are  thus  far  war- 
ranted in  aflirming  is,  that  if  there  be  a  characteristic  mental 
effect  of  such  disease,  it  is  a  great  fear,  mounting  up  at  times 
to  despairing  anguish  ;  and  perhaps  I  may  venture  to  add 
that,  if  there  be  a  variety  of  mental  disorder  specifically  con- 
nected with  heart-disease,  it  is  that  form  of  melancholia  in 
which  the  patient  is  overwhelmed  with  a  vague  and  vast 
apprehension,  Avhere  there  is  not  so  much  a  definite  delusion 
as  a  dreadful  fear  of  every  thing  actual  and  possible,  and 
which  is  sometimes  described  hb  panphobia. 


86  BODY  AND   MIND. 

There  has  long  been  an  opinion,  wliich  seems  to  be  well 
founded,  that  tubercle  of  the  lungs  is  more  common  among 
the  insane  than  among  the  sane.  For  although  the  propor- 
tion of  deaths  in  asylums  attributed  to  phthisis  is  one-fourth, 
which  is  the  same  proportion  as  that  for  the  sane  population 
above  fourteen  years  of  age,  Dr.  Clouston  has  shown,  by 
careful  scrutiny  of  the  records  "of  282  post-mortem  examina- 
tions made  in  the  Edinburgh  Asylum,  that  phthisis  was  the 
assigned  cause  of  death  in  only  a  little  more  than  half  of  the 
cases  in  which  there  was  tubercle  in  the  body.  The  symp- 
toms of  phthisis  are  so  much  masked  in  the  insane,  there 
being  usually  no  cough  and  no  expectoration,  that  its  diag- 
nosis is  difficult,  and  it  is  not  always  detected  during  life. 
The  relation  between  it  and  insanity  has  been  noticed  by 
several  writers:  Schroder  van  der  Kolk  was  distinctly  of 
opinion  that  an  hereditary  predisposition  to  phthisis  might 
predispose  to,  or  develop  into,  insanity,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  insanity  predisposed  to  phthisis ;  and  Dr.  Clous- 
ton  found  that  hereditary  prediposition  to  insanity  existed  in 
seven  per  cent,  more  of  the  insane  who  were  tubercular  than 
of  the  insane  generally.  "When  family  degeneration  is  far 
gone,  the  two  diseases  appear  to  occur  frequently,  and  the 
last  member  is  likely  to  die  insane  or  phthisical,  or  both ; 
whether,  therefore,  they  mutually  predispose  to  one  another 
or  not,  they  are  often  concomitant  effects  in  the  course  of 
degeneration.  However,  in  weighing  the  specific  value  of 
these  observations,  we  must  not  forget  that,  independently 
of  any  special  relation,  the  enfeebled  nutrition  of  tuberculosis 
will  tend  to  stimulate  into  activity  the  latent  predisposition 
to  insanity ;  and  that,  in  like  manner,  insanity,  especially  in 
its  melancholic  forms,  will  favor  the  actual  development  of  a 
predisposition  to  phthisis. 

In  the  cases  in  which  the  development  of  phthisis  and 
insanity  has  been  nearly  contemporaneous,  which  are  about 
one-fourth  of  the  cases  in  which  they  coexist,  the  mental 
symptoms  are  of  so  peculiar  and  uniform  a  character  as  to 


PHTHISICAL  MANIA.  87 

]i;ivc  led  to  the  inclusion  of  the  cases  in  a  natural  group 
under  the  designation  of  phthisical  mania.  They  have  no 
positively  distinctive  symptom,  it  is  true ;  they  cannot  he 
separated  from  other  cases  by  a  well-defined  line  of  demar- 
cation. Yet  they  do  exhibit,  Dr.  Clouston  believes,  certain 
common  and  uniform  characters  which  justify  their  descrii)- 
tion  as  a  separate  variety.  They  often  begin  in  an  insidious 
way  by  irritability,  waywardness,  and  capriciousness  of  con- 
duct, and  apparent  weakening  of  intellect ;  yet  the  patient 
converses  rationally  when  he  chooses  to  talk,  and  shows  that 
he  still  lias  his  intellect,  albeit  there  is  a  great  disinclination 
to  exert  it.  To  sign  a  certificate  of  his  insanity  would  be  no 
easy  matter.  Or  they  begin  with  an  acutely  maniacal  or 
melancholic  stage,  which  is,  however,  of  very  short  duration, 
soon  passing  into  a  half-maniacal,  half-demented  state.  If 
there  be  a  single  characteristic  feature,  it  is  a  monomania  of 
suspicion.  As  the  disease  advances,  the  symptoms  of  de- 
mentia predominate  ;  but  there  are  occasional  brief  attacks 
of  irritable  excitement  and  fitful  flashes  of  intelligence.  And 
in  these  cases,  more  often  than  in  other  cases,  there  occurs  a 
momentary  revival  of  intelligence  before  death.  "We  shall 
the  more  readily  admit  the  special  features  of  phthisical 
mania  when  we  call  to  mind  that  there  is  in  most  phthisical 
patients  a  peculiar  mental  state ;  and  that  brief  attacks  of 
temporary  mania  or  delirium  sometimes  occur  in  the  course 
of  phthisis.  The  phthisical  patient  is  irritable,  fanciful,  un- 
stable of  purpose,  brilliant,  and  imaginative,  but  wanting  in 
calmness  and  repose,  quick  of  insight,  but  without  depth  and 
comprehension  ;  every  thing  is  fitful — fitful  energy,  fitful  pro- 
jects, fitful  flashes  of  imagination.  The  hectic  is  in  his 
thoughts  and  in  his  actions.  The  whims  and  imaginings  of 
his  mind  become  almost  wanderings  at  times,  his  fancies 
almost  delusions. 

I  have  now  said  enough  concerning  the  sympathetic 
mental  effects  of  disordered  organs,  not  certainly  to  set  forth 
adequately  their  nature,  but  to  show  the  essential  importance 


88  BODY  AND   MIND. 

of  a  careful  study  of  them.  To  complete  the  exposition  of 
the  action  of  pathological  sympathies  on  mind,  it  would  be 
necessary  to  trace  out  the  close  relations  that  there  are 
between  the  organic  feelings  and  the  different  kinds  of  special 
sensibility — between  systemic  and  sense  consciousness.  The 
digestive  organs  have  a  close  sympathy  with  the  sense  of 
taste,  as  we  observe  in  the  bad  taste  accompanying  indiges- 
tion, in  the  nausea  and  vomiting  which  a  nauseous  taste 
may  cause,  and  in  the  avoidance  of  poisonous  matter  by 
animals.  The  respiratory  organs  and  the  sense  of  smell  are, 
in  like  manner,  sympathetically  associated ;  and  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  sense  of  smell  has  special  relations  with  the 
sexual  feeling.  The  state  of  the  digestive  organs  notably 
affects  the  general  sensibility  of  the  skin.  Disturbances  of 
these  physiological  sympathies  may  become  the  occasions  of 
insane  delusions.  Digestive  derangement,  perverting  the 
taste,  will  engender  a  delusion  that  the  food  is  poisoned. 
Disease  of  the  respiratory  organs  appears  sometimes  to  pro- 
duce disagreeable  smells,  which  are  then  perhaps  attributed 
to  objective  causes,  such  as  the  presence  of  a  corpse  in  the 
room,  or  to  gases  maliciously  disseminated  in  it  by  fancied 
persecutors.  In  mania,  smell  and  taste  are  often  grossly  per- 
verted, for  the  patient  will  devour,  with  seeming  relish  and 
avidity,  dirt  and  garbage  of  the  most  offensive  kind.  Increase, 
diminution,  or  perversion  of  the  sensibility  of  the  skin,  one 
or  other  of  which  is  not  uncommon  among  the  insane,  may 
undoubtedly  be  the  cause  of  extravagant  delusions.  We 
hardly,  indeed,  realize  how  completely  the  mind  is  dependent 
upon  the  habit  of  its  sensations.  The  man  who  has  lost  a 
limb  can  hardly  be  persuaded  that  he  has  lost  it,  so  sensible 
is  he  of  the  accustomed  feelings  in  it ;  years  after  he  has  lost 
it  he  dreams  of  vivid  sensations  and  of  active  movements  in 
it — ^has,  in  fact,  both  sensory  and  motor  hallucinations.  It  is 
easy,  then,  to  understand  how  greatly  abnormal  sensations 
may  perplex  and  deceive  the  unsound  mind.  A  woman  under 
Esquirol's  care  had  complete  anaesthesia  of  the  skin:    she 


HALLUCINATIONS.  89 

believed  that  the  devil  had  carried  off  her  body.  A  soldier 
Avho  was  wounded  at  the  battle  of  Austerlitz  lost  the  sensibil- 
ity of  his  skin,  and  from  that  time  thought  bimself  dead. 
When  asked  how  he  was,  he  replied,  "Lambert  no  longer 
lives;  a  cannon-ball  carried  him  away  at  Austerlitz.  What 
you  see  is  not  Lambert,  but  a  badly-imitated  machine,"  which 
he  always  spoke  of  as  it.  A  patient  under  my  care,  who  suf- 
fered from  general  paralysis,  and  had  lost  sensibility  and 
voluntary  power  of  one  side,  could  never  be  persuaded  that 
another  patient,  a  very  harmless  fellow,  had  not  got  hold  of 
him,  and  was  keeping  him  down ;  and  when  convulsions 
occurred  in  the  paralyzed  side,  as  they  did  from  time  to  time, 
he  swore  terribly  at  his  fancied  tormentor.  Were  a  sane  per- 
son to  wake  up  some  morning  with  the  cutaneous  sensibility 
gone,  or  with  a  large  area  of  it  sending  up  to  the  brain  per- 
verted and  quite  unaccountable  impressions,  it  might  be  a 
hard  matter  perhaps  for  him  to  help  going  mad. 

The  mental  effects  of  perverted  sensation  afford  a  promis- 
ing field  for  future  research;  when  better  understood  it  can- 
not be  doubted  that  they  will  explain  many  phenomena  in 
the  pathology  of  mind  that  now  quite  baffle  explanation.  It 
behooves  us  to  clearly  realize  the  broad  fact,  which  has  most 
wide-reaching  consequences  in  mental  physiology  and  pathol- 
ogy, that  all  parts  of  the  body,  the  highest  and  t*he  lowest, 
have  a  sympathy  with  one  another  more  intelligent  than 
conscious  intelligence  can  yet,  or  perhaps  ever  will,  conceive ; 
that  there  is  not  an  organic  motion,  visible  or  invisible,  sen- 
sible or  insensible,  ministrant  to  the  noblest  or  to  the  most 
humble  purposes,  which  docs  not  work  its  appointed  effect  in 
the  complex  recesses  of  mind ;  that  the  mind,  as  the  crowning 
achievement  of  organization,  and  the  consummation  and  out- 
come of  all  its  energies,  really  comprehends  the  bodily  life. 

I  had  originally  set  down  within  the  purpose  of  these 
Lectures  the  consideration,  which  I  must  now  forego,  of  the 
influence  of  the  quantity  and  quality  of  the  blood  in  the  pro- 
duction of  insanity.      Poverty  and  vitiation  of  blood  may 


90^  BODY  AXD   MIND. 

certainly  play  a  weighty  part  in  producing  mental,  as  they  do 
in  producing  other  nervous  disorders.  Lower  the  supply  of 
blood  to  the  brain  below  a  certain  level,  and  the  power  of 
thinking  is  abolished ;  the  brain  will  then  no  more  do  mental 
work  than  a  water-wheel  will  move  the  machinery  of  the  mill 
when  the  water  is  lowered  so  as  not  to  touch  it.  When  a 
strong  emotion  produces  a  temporary  loss  of  consciousness, 
it  is  to  be  presumed  that  a  contraction  of  arteries  takes  place 
within  the  brain  similar  to  that  which  causes  the  pallor  of 
the  face  ;  and  when  the  laboring  heart  pumps  hard  to  over- 
come the  obstruction,  and  the  walls  of  the  vessels  are  weak, 
they  may  burst,  and  the  patient  die  of  effusion  of  blood. 
During  sleep  the  supply  of  blood  to  the  brain  is  lessened 
naturally,  and  we  perceive  the  effects  of  the  lowering  of  the 
supply,  as  it  takes  place,  in  the  sort  of  incoherence  or  mild 
delirium  of  ideas  just  before  falling  off  to  sleep.  To  a  like 
condition  of  things  we  ought  most  probably  to  attribute  the 
attacks  of  transitory  mania  or  delirium  that  occur  now  and 
then  in  consequence  of  great  physical  exhaustion,  as  from 
great  and  sudden  loss  of  blood,  or  just  as  convalescence  from 
fever  or  other  acute  disease  is  setting  in,  or  in  the  prostration 
of  phthisis,  and  which  a  glass  of  wine  opportunely  given  will 
sometimes  cure.  The  distress  of  the  melancholic  patient  is 
greatest  when  he  wakes  in  the  morning,  whicb  is  a  time 
when  a  watch  ought  to  be  kept  specially  over  the  suicidal 
patient;  the  reason  lying  probably  in  the  effects  of  the  di- 
minished cerebral  circulation  during  sleep. 

If  the  state  of  the  blood  be  vitiated  by  reason  of  some 
poison  bred  in  the  body,  or  introduced  into  it  from  without, 
the  mental  functions  may  be  seriously  deranged.  We  are 
able,  indeed,  by  means  of  the  drugs  at  our  command,  to  per- 
form all  sorts  of  experiments  on  the  mind:  we  can  suspend 
its  action  for  a  time  by  chloral  or  chloroform,  can  exalt  its 
functions  by  small  doses  of  opium  or  moderate  doses  of  alco- 
hol, can  pervert  them,  producing  an  artificial  delirium,  by  the 
administration  of  large  enough  doses  of  belladonna  and  Indian 


VITIATED   BLOOD.  91 

hemp.  Wc  can  positively  do  more  experimentally  with  the 
functions  of  the  mind-centres  than  wc  can  do  with  those  of 
any  other  organ  of  the  body.  "When  these  are  exalted  in  con- 
sequence of  a  foreign  substance  introduced  into  the  blood,  it 
cannot  be  doubted  that  some  physical  effect  is  produced  on 
the  nerve-element,  which  is  the  condition  of  the  increased 
activity,  not  otherwise  probably  than  as  happens  when  a 
fever  makes,  as  it  certainly  will  sometimes  do,  a  demented 
person,  whose  mind  seemed  gone  past  all  hope  of  even  mo- 
mentary recovery,  quite  sensible  for  the  time  being.  Perhaps 
this  should  teach  us  that,  just  as  there  are  vibrations  of  light 
which  we  cannot  see,  and  vibrations  of  sound  which  we  can- 
not hear,  so  there  are  molecular  movements  in  the  brain  which 
are  incapable  of  producing  thought  ordinarily,  not  sufficing  to 
affect  consciousness,  but  which  may  do  so  when  the  sensi- 
bility of  the  molecules  is  exalted  by  physical  or  chemical 
modification  of  them. 

Alcohol  yields  us,  in  its  direct  effects,  the  abstract  and 
brief  chronicle  of  the  course  of  mania.  At  first  there  is  an 
agreeable  excitement,  a  lively  flow  of  ideas,  a  revival  of  old 
ideas  and  feelings  which  seemed  to  have  passed  from  the  mind, 
a  general  increase  of  mental  activity — a  condition  very  like 
that  which  often  precedes  an  attack  of  acute  mania,  when 
the  patient  is  witty,  lively,  satirical,  makes  jokes  or  rhymes, 
and  certainly  exhibits  a  brilliancy  of  fancy  which  he  is  capable 
of  at  no  other  time.  Then  there  follows,  in  the  next  stage  of 
its  increasing  action,  as  there  does  in  mania,  the  automatic 
excitation  of  ideas  which  start  up  and  follow  one  another 
without  order,  so  that  thought  and  speech  are  more  or  less 
incoherent,  while  passion  is  easily  excited.  After  this  stage 
has  lasted  for  a  time,  in  some  longer,  in  others  shorter,  it 
passes  into  one  of  depression  and  maudlin  melancholy,  just  as 
mania  sometimes  passes  into  melancholia,  or  convulsion  into 
paralysis.  And  the  last  stage  of  all  is  one  of  stupor  and  de- 
mentia. If  the  abuse  of  alcohol  be  continued  for  years,  it 
may  cause  different  forms  of  mental  derangement,  in  each  of 


92  BODY  AND   MIND. 

which  the  muscular  are  curiously  like  the  mental  symptoms : 
delirium  tremens  in  one,  an  acute  noisy  and  destructive  mania 
in  another,  chronic  alcoholism  in  a  third,  and  a  condition  of 
mental  weakness  with  loss  of  memory  and  loss  of  energy  in  a 
fourth. 

Writers  on  gout  agree  that  a  suppressed  gout  may  entail 
mental  derangement  in  some  persons  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  insanity  has  sometimes  disappeared  with  the  appearance 
of  the  usual  gouty  paroxysm.  Sydenham  noticed  and  described 
a  species  of  mania  supervening  on  an  epidemic  of  intermittent 
fever,  which,  he  remarks,  contrary  to  all  other  kinds  of  mad- 
ness, would  not  yield  to  plentiful  venesection  and  purging. 
Griesinger,  again,  has  directed  attention  to  cases  in  which, 
instead  of  the  usual  symptoms  of  ague,  the  patient  has  had  an 
intermittent  insanity  in  regular  tertian  or  quartan  attacks,  and 
has  been  cured  by  quinine.  "We  must  bear  in  mind,  however, 
that  intermittence  ijiay  be  a  feature  of  insanity  as  of  other 
nervous  diseases,  without  ague  having  any  thing  whatever  to 
do  with  it,  and  without  quinine  doing  any  good  whatever. 
Quinine  will  not  cure  the  intermittence  of  nervous  diseases, 
though  it  may  cure  ague  in  whicli  the  symptoms  are  ioter- 
mittent.  Griesinger  has  also  pointed  out  that  mental  disorder 
has  sometimes  occurred  in  the  course  of  acute  rheumatism, 
the  swelling  of  the  joints  meanwhile  subsiding.  These  facts, 
with  others  which  I  cannot  dwell  upon  now,  prove  how  im- 
portant an  agency  in  the  production  of  insanity  a  perverted 
state  of  the  blood  may  be.  But  it  is  a  mode  of  causation  of 
which  we  know  so  little  that  I  may  justly  declare  we  know 
next  to  nothing.  The  observation  and  classification  of  mental 
disorders  have  been  so  exclusively  psychological  that  we  have 
not  sincerely  realized  the  fact  that  they  illustrate  the  same 
pathological  principles  as  other  diseases,  are  produced  in  the 
same  way,  and  must  be  investigated  in  the  same  spirit  of  posi- 
tive research.  Until  this  be  done  I  see  no  hope  of  improve- 
ment in  our  knowledge  of  them,  and  no  use  in  multiplying 
books  about  them. 


IDIOPATHIC  INSANITY.  93 

It  is  quite  true  that  wlien  we  have  referred  all  the  cases 
of  insanity  which  we  can  to  bodily  causes,  and  grouped  them 
according  to  their  characteristic  bodily  and  mental  featuros, 
there  will  remain  cases  which  we  cannot  refer  to  any  recog- 
nizable bodily  cause  or  connect  with  any  definite  bodily  dis- 
ease, and  which  we  must  be  content  to  describe  as  idiopathic. 
The  explanation  of  these  cases  we  shall  probably  discover- 
ultimately  in  the  influence  of  the  hereditary  neurosis  and  in 
the  peculiarities  of  individual  temperament.  It  is  evident 
that  there  are  fundamental  differences  of  temperament,  and 
it  is  furthermore  plain  that  different  natures  will  be  differently 
favored  in  the  struggle  of  existence  ;  one  person  will  have  an 
advantage  over  another,  and  by  the  operation  of  the  law  of 
Natural  Selection  there  will  be  a  success  of  the  fittest  to  suc- 
ceed. It  is  with  the  development  of  mind  in  the  conduct  of  life 
as  it  is  with  every  form  of  life  in  its  relation  to  its  environ- 
ment. Life  is  surrounded  by  forces  that  are  always  tending 
to  destroy  it,  and  with  which  it  may  be  represented  as  in  a 
continued  warfare :  so  long  as  it  contends  successfully  with 
them,  winning  from  them  and  constraining  them  to  further 
its  development,  it  flourishes  ;  but  when  it  can  no  longer  strive, 
when  they  succeed  in  winning  from  it  and  increasing  at  its 
expense,  it  begins  to  decay  and  die.  So  it  is  with  mind  in 
the  circumstances  of  its  existence  :  the  individual  who  cannot 
use  circumstances,  or  accommodate  himself  successfully  to 
them,  and  in  the  one  way  or  the  other  make  them  further  his 
development,  is  controlled  and  used  by  them  ;  being  weak,  he 
must  be  miserable,  must  be  a  victim  ;  and  one  way  in  which 
his  suffering  and  failure  will  be  manifest  will  be  in  insanity. 
Thus  it  is  that  mental  trials  which  serve  in  the  end  to  strength- 
en a  strong  nature  break  down  a  weak  one  which  cannot  fitly 
react,  and  that  the  eflaciency  of  a  moral  cause  of  insanity 
betrays  a  conspiracy  from  within  with  the  unfavorable  out- 
ward circumstances. 

It  behooves  us  to  bear  distinctly  in  mind,  when  we  take 
the  moral  causes  of  insanity  into  consideration,  that  the  men- 


94  BODY  AND  MIND. 

tal  suflfering  or  psychical  pain  of  a  sad  emotion  testifies 
to  actual  wear  and  tear  of  nerve-element,  to  disintegration 
of  some  kind ;  it  is  the  exponent  of  a  physical  change. 
"What  the  change  is  we  know  not;  hut  we  may  take  it  to  he 
heyond  question  that,  when  a  shock  imparted  to  the  mind 
through  the  senses  causes  a  violent  emotion,  it  produces  a 
real  commotion  in  the  molecules  of  the  brain.  It  is  not  that 
an  intangible  something  flashes  inward  and  mysteriously  af- 
fects an  intangible  metaphysical  entity ;  but  that  an  impres- 
sion made  on  the  sense  is  conveyed  along  nervous  paths  of 
communication,  and  produces  a  definite  physical  efi^ect  in 
physically-constituted  mind-centres;  and  that  the  mental 
efiect,  which  is  the  exponent  of  the  physical  change,  may  be 
then  transferred  by  molecular  motion  to  the  muscles,  thus 
getting  muscular  expression,  or  to  the  processes  of  nutrition 
and  secretion,  getting  expression  in  modifications  of  them. 
"When  there  is  a  native  infirmity  or  instability  of  nerve- 
element,  in  consequence  of  bad  ancestral  influences,  the  in- 
dividual will  be  more  liable  to,  and  will  sufler  more  from, 
such  violent  mental  commotions;  the  disintegrating  change 
in  the  nerve-element  will  be  more  likely  to  pass  into  a  disor- 
ganization which  rest  and  nutrition  cannot  repair,  not  other- 
wise than  as  happens  with  the  elements  of  any  other  organ 
under  like  conditions  of  excessive  stimulation.  As  physi- 
cians, we  cannot  afford  to  lose  sight  of  the  physical  aspects 
of  mental  states,  if  we  would  truly  comprehend  the  nature 
of  mental  disease,  and  learn  to  treat  it  with  success.  The 
metaphysician  may,  for  the  purposes  of  speculation,  separate 
mind  from  body,  and  evoke  the  laws  of  its  operation  out  of 
the  depths  of  self- consciousness;  but  the  physician — who 
has  to  deal  practically  with  the  thoughts,  feelings,  and  con- 
duct of  men;  who  has  to  do  with  mind,  not  as  an  abstract 
entity  concerning  which  he  may  be  content  to  speculate,  but 
as  a  force  in  Nature,  the  operations  of  which  he  must  pa- 
tiently observe  and  anxiously  labor  to  influence — must  recog- 
nize how  entirely  the  integrity  of  the  mental  functions  de- 


UNITY   OF   BODY   AND    MIND.  95 

pends  on  the  integrity  of  the  bodily  organization — must  ac- 
knowledge the  essential  unity  of  body  and  mind. 

To  set  forth  this  unity  has  been  a  chief  aim  in  these  Lec- 
tures, because  I  entertain  a  most  sincere  conviction  that  a 
just  conception  of  it  must  lie  at  the  foundation  of  a  real  ad- 
vance in  our  knowledge  both  of  the  physiology  and  pathol- 
ogy of  mind.  I  have  no  wish  whatever  to  exalt  unduly  the 
body ;  I  have,  if  possible,  still  less  desire  to  degrade  the  mind ; 
but  I  do  protest,  with  all  the  energy  I  dare  use,  against  the 
unjust  and  most  unscientific  practice  of  declaring  the  body 
vile  and  despicable,  of  looking  down  upon  the  highest  and 
most  wonderful  contrivance  of  creative  skill  as  something  of 
which  man  dare  venture  to  feel  ashamed.  I  cannot  now 
summarize  the  facts  and  arguments  which  I  have  brought 
forward  ;  I  must  trust  to  the  indulgence  of  your  memory  of 
them  when  I  declare  that  to  my  mind  it  appears  a  clear  sci- 
entific duty  to  repudiate  the  quotation  from  an  old  writer, 
which  the  late  Sir  William  Hamilton  used  to  hang  on  the 
wall  of  his  lecture-room  : 

"  On  earth,  there  is  nothing  great  but  man, 
In  man  there  is  nothing  great  but  mnid." 

The  aphorism,  which,  like  most  aphorisms,  contains  an  equal 
measiu*e  of  truth  and  untruth,  is  suitable  enough  to  the  pure 
metaphysician,  but  it  is  most  unsuitable  to  the  scientific  in- 
quirer, who  is  bound  to  reject  it,  not  because  of  that  which 
is  not  true  in  it  only,  but  much  more  because  of  the  baneful 
spirit  with  which  it  is  inspired.  On  earth  there  are  assured- 
ly other  things  great  besides  man,  though  none  greater ;  and 
in  man  there  are  other  things  great  besides  mind,  though  none 
greater.  And  whosoever,  inspired  by  the  spirit  of  the  aph- 
orism, thinks  to  know  any  thing  truly  of  man  without  study- 
ing most  earnestly  the  things  on  earth  that  lead  up  to  man, 
or  to  know  any  thing  truly  of  mind  without  studying  most 
earnestly  the  things  in  the  body  that  lead  up  to  and  issue  in 
mind,  will  enter  on  a  barren  labor,  which,  if  not  a  sorrow  to 


96  BODY  AND   MIND. 

himself,  will  assuredly  be  sorrow  and  vexation  of  spirit  to 
others.  To  reckon  the  highest  operations  of  mind  to  be 
functions  of  a  mental  organization  is  to  exalt,  not  to  degrade, 
our  conception  of  creative  power  and  skill.  For,  if  it  be 
lawful  and  right  to  burst  into  admiration  of  the  wonderful 
contrivance  in  Nature  by  which  noble  and  beautiful  products 
are  formed  out  of  base  materials,  it  is  surely  much  stronger 
evidence  of  contrivance  to  have  developed  the  higher  mental 
functions  by  evolution  from  the  lower,  and  to  have  used 
forms  of  matter  as  the  organic  instruments  of  all.  I  know 
not  why  the  Power  which  created  matter  and  its  properties 
should  be  thought  not  to  have  endowed  it  with  the  functions 
of  reason,  feeling,  and  will,  seeing  that,  whether  we  discover 
it  to  be  so  endowed  or  not,  the  mystery  is  equally  incompre- 
hensible to  us,  equally  simple  and  easy  to  the  Power  which 
created  matter  and  its  properties.  To  a  right-thinking  and 
right-feeling  mind,  the  beauty,  the  grandeur,  the  mystery  of 
Nature  are  augmented,  not  lessened,  by  each  new  glimpse  into 
the  secret  recesses  of  her  operations.  The  sun  going  forth 
from  its  chamber  in  the  east  to  run  its  course  is  not  less  glo- 
rious in  majesty  because  we  have  discovered  the  law  of  gravi- 
tation, and  are  able  by  spectral  analysis  to  detect  the  metals 
which  enter  into  its  composition — because  it  is  no  longer 
Helios  driving  his  golden  chariot  though  the  pathless  spaces 
of  the  heavens.  The  mountains  are  not  less  imposing  in 
their  grandeur  because  the  Oreads  have  deserted  them,  nor 
the  groves  less  attractive,  nor  the  streams  more  desolate,  be- 
cause science  lias  banished  the  Dryads  and  the  Naiads.  No, 
science  has  not  destroyed  poetry,  nor  expelled  the  divine 
from  Nature,  but  has  furnished  the  materials,  and  given  the 
presages,  of  a  higher  poetry  and  a  mightier  philosophy  than 
the  world  has  yet  seen.  The  grave  of  each  superstition 
which  it  slays  is  the  Avorab  of  a  better  birth.  And  if  it 
come  to  pass  in  its  onward  march — as  it  may  well  be  it  will 
come  to  pass — that  other  superstitions  shall  be  dethroned  as 


SCIENCE  AND   POETRY.  9Y 

the  sun-god  has  been  dethroned,  wo  may  rest  assured  that 
this  also  will  be  a  step  in  human  progress,  and  in  the  benefi- 
cent evolution  of  the  Power  which  ruleth  alike  the  courses 
of  the  stars  and  the  wavs  of  men. 


APPENDIX. 


I.— THE    LIMITS    OF    PHILOSOPHICAL    mQUIRY.* 

It  is  not  a  little  hard  upon  those  who  now  devote  them- 
selves to  the  patient  interrogation  of  Nature,  by  means  of 
observation  and  experiment,  that  they  shoidd  be  counted, 
whether  they  will  or  not,  ministers  of  the  so-called  Positive 
Philosophy,  and  disciples  of  him  who  is  popularly  considered 
the  founder  of  that  philosophy.  No  matter  that  positive  in- 
vestigation within  the  limits  which  Comte  prescribes  was 
pursued  earnestly  and  systematically  before  his  advent,  and 
with  an  exactness  of  method  of  which  he  had  no  conception; 
that  many  of  thoso  distinguished  since  his  time  for  their 
scientific  researches  and  generalizations  have  been  unac- 
quainted with  his  writings;  that  others  who  have  studied 
them  withhold  their  adherence  from  his  doctrines,  or  ener- 
getically disclaim  them.  These  things  are  not  considered; 
so  soon  as  a  scientific  inquirer  pushes  his  researches  into  the 
phenomena  of  life  and  mind,  he  is  held  to  be  a  Comtist.  Thus 
it  happens  that  there  is  a  growing  tendency  in  the  public 
mind  to  identify  modern  science  with  the  Positive  Philosophy. 
Considering  how  much  mischief  has  often  been  done  by  iden- 

*  Journal  of  Mental  Science,  No.  70.  The  Limits  of  Philosophical  Inquiry. 
Address  delivered  to  the  Members  of  the  Edinburgh  Philosophical  Institu- 
tion, November  6,  1868.  By  William,  Lord-Archbishop  of  York.  (Edmon- 
ston  and  Douglas.) 


THE   LIMITS   OF  rHILOSOPHICAL  INQUIRY.        99 

tifying  the  character  of  an  epoch  of  thought  with  the  doc- 
trines of  some  eminent  man  wlio  has  lived  and  lahored  and 
taken  the  lead  in  it,  and  thus  making  his  defects  and  errors, 
hardened  into  formulas,  chains  to  fetter  the  free  course  of 
thought,  it  is  no  wonder  that  scientific  men  should  be  anxious 
to  disclaim  Comtc  as  their  lawgiver,  and  to  protest  against 
such  a  king  being  set  up  to  reign  over  them.  Not  conscious 
of  any  personal  obligation  to  his  writings,  conscious  how 
much,  in  some  respects,  he  has  misrepresented  the  spirit  and 
pretensions  of  science,  they  repudiate  the  allegiance  which 
his  enthusiastic  disciples  would  force  upon  them,  and  which 
popular  opinion  is  fast  coming  to  think  a  natural  one.  They 
do  well  in  thus  making  a  timely  assertion  of  independence ; 
for,  if  it  be  not  done  soon,  it  will  soon  be  too  late  to  be  done 
well.  "W^hen  we  look  back  at  the  history  of  systems  of  re- 
ligion and  philosophy,  it  is  almost  appalling  to  reflect  how 
entirely  one  man  has  appropriated  the  intellectual  develop- 
ment of  his  age,  and  how  despotically  he  has  constrained  the 
faith  of  generations  after  him ;  the  mind  of  mankind  is  abso- 
lutely oppressed  by  the  weight  of  his  authority,  and  his  errors 
and  limitations  are  deemed  not  less  sacred  than  the  true  ideas 
of  which  he  has  been  the  organ :  for  a  time  he  is  made  an 
idol,  at  the  sound  of  whose  name  the  human  intellect  is  ex- 
pected to  fall  down  and  worship,  as  the  people,  nations,  and 
languages  were  expected,  at  what  time  they  heard  the  sound 
of  the  flute,  harp,  sackbut,  dulcimer,  and  all  kinds  of  music, 
to  fall  down  and  worship  the  golden  image  which  Nebuchad- 
nezzar the  king  had  set  up.  Happily  it  is  not  so  easy  to  take 
captive  the  understanding  now,  when  thought  is  busy  on  so 
many  subjects  in  such  various  domains  of  Nature,  and  when 
an  army  of  investigators  often  marches  where  formerly  a 
solitary  pioneer  painfully  sought  his  way,  as  it  was  when  the 
fields  of  intellectual  activity  were  few  and  limited,  and  the 
laborers  in  them  few  also. 

A  lecture  delivered  by  the  Archbishop  of  York  before  the 
Edinburgh  Philosophical  Institution,  which  has  been  pub- 


100  THE  LIMITS   OF 

lished  as  a  pamphlet,  contains  a  plain,  earnest,  and  on  the 
whole  temperate,  but  not  very  closely-reasoned,  criticism, 
from  his  point  of  view,  of  the  tendency  of  modern  scientific 
research,  or  rather  of  Positivism,  and  a  somewhat  vagne  dec- 
laration of  the  limits  of  philosophical  inquiry.  He  perceives 
with  sorrow,  but  not  with  great  apprehension,  that  the  pros- 
pects of  philosophy  are  clouded  over  in  England,  France,  and 
Germany,  and  that  a  great  part  of  the  thinking  world  is  oc- 
cupied with  physical  researches.  But  he  does  not  therefore 
despair ;  believing  that  Positivism  indicates  only  a  temporary 
mood,  produced  by  prostration  and  lassitude  after  a  period 
of  unusual  controversy,  and  that  it  will  after  a  time  pass 
away,  and  be  followed  by  a  new  era  of  speculative  activity. 
It  may  be  presumed  that  men,  weary  of  their  fruitless  efiorts 
to  scale  the  lofty  and  seemingly  barren  heights  of  true  philos- 
ophy, have  taken  the  easy  path  of  Positivism,  which  does  not 
lead  upward  at  all,  but  leads,  if  it  be  followed  far  enough,  to 
quagmires  of  unbelief.  The  facts  on  which  the  archbishop 
bases  his  opinion,  and  the  steps  of  reasoning  by  which  he  is 
able  thus  to  couple  a  period  of  speculative  activity  with  a 
period  of  religious  belief,  and  to  declare  a  system  of  positive 
scientific  research  to  be  linked  inseparably  with  a  system  of 
unbelief,  do  not  appear^  they  are  suflScient  to  inspire  strong 
conviction  in  him,  but  they  apparently  lie  too  far  down  in 
the  depths  of  his  moral  consciousness  to  be  capable  of  being 
unfolded,  in  lucid  sequence,  to  the  apprehension  of  others. 

To  the  critical  reader  of  the  lecture  it  must  at  once  occur 
that  a  want  of  discrimination  between  things  that  are  wide- 
ly different  is  the  cause  of  no  little  looseness,  if  not  reck- 
lessness, of  assertion.  In  the  first  place,  the  archbishop 
identifies  off-hand  the  course  and  aim  of  modern  scientific 
progress  with  the  Positivism  of  Comte  and  his  followers. 
This  is  very  much  as  if  any  one  should  insist  on  attributing 
the  same  character  and  the  same  aim  to  persons  who  were 
travelling  for  a  considerable  distance  along  the  same  road. 
As  it  was  Oomte's  great  aim  to  organize  a  harmonious  co- 


PHILOSOPHICAL   INQUIRY.  IQI 

ordination  and  subordination  of  the  sciences,  lie  assimilated 
and  used  for  bis  purpose  tbe  scientific  knowledge  wbicb  was 
available  to  him,  and  systematized  tbe  observed  method  of 
scientific  progress  from  the  more  simple  and  general  to  the 
more  special  and  complex  studies ;  but  it  assuredly  is  most 
unwarrantable  to  declare  those  who  are  engaged  in  physical 
research  to  be  committed  to  his  conclusions  and  pretensions, 
and  there  can  be  no  question  that  a  philosophy  of  science, 
when  it  is  written,  will  differ  widely  from  the  so-called  Posi- 
tive Philosophy. 

In  the  second  place,  the  archbishop  unwittingly  perpe- 
trates a  second  and  similarly  reckless  injustice  in  assuming, 
as  he  does,  that  modern  science  must  needs  accept  what  he 
describes  as  the  sensational  philosophy.  "  Thus  the  business 
of  science,"  he  says,  "  is  to  gather  np  the  facts  as  they  ap- 
pear, without  addition  or  perversion  of  the  senses.  As  the 
senses  are  our  only  means  of  knowledge,  and  we  can  only 
know  things  as  they  present  themselves  to  tho  eye  and  ear, 
it  follows  that  our  knowledge  is  not  absolute  knowledge  of 
the  things,  but  a  knowledge  of  their  relations  to  us,  that  is, 
of  our  sensations."  Passing  by  the  question,  which  might 
well  be  raised,  whether  any  one,  even  the  founder  of  the 
sensational  philosophy,  ever  thus  crudely  asserted  the  senses 
to  be  our  only  means  of  knowledge,  and  our  knowledge  to 
be  only  a  knowledge  of  our  sensations  ;  passing  by,  too,  any 
discussion  concerning  what  the  archbishop  means,  if  he 
means  any  thing,  by  an  absolute  knowledge  of  things  as  dis- 
tinct from  a  knowledge  of  things  in  their  relations  to  us,  and 
all  speculations  concerning  the  faculties  which  finite  and  rel- 
ative beings  who  are  not  archbishops  have  of  apprehending 
and  comprehending  the  absolute  ;  it  is  necessary  to  protest 
against  the  assumption  that  science  is  committed  to  such  a 
representation  of  the  sensational  philosophy,  or  to  the  sensa- 
tional philosophy  at  all.  Those  modern  inquirers  who  have 
pushed  farthest  their  physical  researches  into  mental  func- 
tions and  bodily  organs  have  notoriously  b»cn  at  great  pains 


102  THE  LIMITS  OF 

to  discriminate  between  the  nervous  centres  which  minister 
to  sensation  and  those  which  minister  to  reflection,  and  have 
done  much  to  elucidate  the  physical  and  functional  connec- 
tions between  them.  They  have  never  been  guilty  of  calling 
all  knowledge  a  knowledge  only  of  sensations,  for  they  rec- 
ognize how  vague,  barren,  and  unmeaning,  are  the  terms  of 
the  old  language  of  philosophical  strife,  when  an  attempt  is 
made  to  apply  them  with  precision  to  the  phenomena  re- 
vealed by  exact  scientific  observation.  The  sensorial  centres 
with  which  the  senses  are  in  direct  connection  are  quite  dis- 
tinct from,  and  subordinate  to,  the  nervous  centres  of  idea- 
tion or  reflection — the  supreme  hemispherical  ganglia.  It  is 
in  these,  which  are  far  more  developed  in  man  than  in  any 
other  animal,  and  more  developed  in  the  higher  than  in  the 
lower  races  of  men,  that  sensation  is  transformed  into  knowl- 
edge, and  that  reflective  consciousness  has  its  seat.  The 
knowledge  so  acquired  is  not  drained  from  the  outer  world 
through  the  senses,  nor  is  it  a  physical  mixture  or  a  chemical 
compound  of  so  much  received  from  without  and  so  much 
added  by  the  mind  or  brain ;  it  is  an  organized  result  of  a 
most  complex  and  delicate  process  of  development  in  the 
highest  kind  of  organic  element  in  Nature — a  mental  organi- 
zation accomplished,  like  any  other  organization,  in  accord- 
ance with  definite  laws.  "We  have  to  do  with  laws  of  life^ 
and  the  language  used  in  the  interpretation  of  phenomena 
must  accord  with  ideas  derived  from  the  study  of  organiza- 
tion ;  for  assuredly  it  cannot  fail  to  produce  confusion  if  it  be 
the  expression  only  of  ideas  derived  from  the  laws  of  phys- 
ical phenomena,  so  far  as  these  are  at  present  known  to  us. 
Now,  the  organization  of  a  definite  sensation  is  a  very  difi'er- 
ent  matter  from,  has  no  resemblance  in  Nature  to,  the  phys- 
ical impression  made  upon  the  organ  of  sense,  and  the  or- 
ganization of  an  idea  is  a  higher  and  more  complex  vital 
process  than  the  organization  of  a  sensation ;  to  call  knowl- 
edge, therefore,  a  knowledge  only  of  sensation  is  either  a 
meaningless  proposition,  or,  in  so  far  as  it  has  meaning,  it  is 


PHILOSOPHICAL  IXQUIRY.  103 

falser  tlian  it  would  be  to  affirm  the  properties  of  a  chemical 
compound  to  be  those  of  its  constituents.  Were  they  who 
pursue  the  scientific  study  of  mind  not  more  thoughtful  than 
the  Archbishop  of  York  gives  them  credit  for  being,  they 
would  have  no  reason  to  give  why  animals  with  as  many 
senses  as  man  has,  and  with  some  of  them  more  acute  than 
his,  have  not  long  since  attained,  like  him,  to  an  understand- 
ing of  the  benefits  of  establishing  archbishoprics. 

It  must  be  understood  that  by  the  assertion  of  the  organic 
basis  of  mental  function  is  not  meant  that  the  mind  imposes 
the  laws  of  its  own  organization ;  on  the  contrary,  it  obeys 
them,  knowing  not  whence  they  come  nor  whither  they 
tend.  Innate  ideas,  fundamental  ideas,  categories  of  the  un- 
derstanding, and  like  metaphysical  expressions,  are  obscure 
intimations  of  the  laws  of  action  of  the  internal  organizing 
power  under  the  conditions  of  its  existence  and  exercise ; 
and  it  is  easy  to  perceive  that  a  new  and  higher  sense  con- 
ferred on  man,  altering  entirely  these  conditions,  would  at 
once  render  necessary  a  new  order  of  fundamental  ideas  or 
categories  of  the  understanding.  That  all  our  knowledge  is 
relative  cannot  be  denied,  unless  it  be  maintained  that  in  that 
wonderful  organizing  power  which  cometh  from  afar  there 
lies  hidden  that  which  may  be  intuitively  revealed  to  con- 
sciousness as  absolute  knowledge — that  the  nature  of  the 
mysterious  power  which  inspires  and  impels  evolution  may, 
by  a  flash  of  intuitive  consciousness,  be  made  manifest  to 
the  mind  in  the  process  of  its  own  development.  If  ISTature 
be  attaining  to  a  complete  self-consciousness  in  man,  far 
away  from  such  an  end  as  it  seems  to  be,  it  is  conceivable 
that  this  might  happen ;  and  if  such  a  miraculous  inspiration 
were  thus  to  reveal  the  unknown,  it  would  be  a  revelation  of 
the  one  primeval  Power.  Clearly,  however,  as  positive  sci- 
entific research  is  powerless  before  a  vast  mystery — the 
whence,  what,  and  whither,  of  the  mighty  power  which 
gives  the  impulse  to  evolution — it  is  not  justified  in  making 
any  proposition  regarding  it.     This,  however,  it  may  rightly 


104  THE  LIMITS  OF 

do ;  while  keeping  its  inquiries  ■vvitliin  the  limits  of  the 
knowable,  it  may  examine  criticallj,  and  nse  all  available 
means  of  testing,  the  claims  and  credentials  of  any  professed 
revelation  of  the  mystery.  And  it  is  in  the  pursuit  of  such 
inquiries  that  it  would  have  been  satisfactory  to  have  had 
from  the  archbishop,  as  a  high-priest  of  the  mystery,  some 
gleam  of  information  as  to  the  proper  limits  which  he  be- 
lieves ought  to  be  observed.  At  what  point  is  the  hitherto 
and  no  farther  to  which  inquiry  may  advance  in  that  direc- 
tion ?  Where  do  we  reach  the  holy  ground  when  it  becomes 
necessary  to  put  the  scientific  shoes  from  off  our  feet  ?  There 
must  assuredly  be  some  right  and  duty  of  examination  into 
the  evidence  of  revelations  claiming  to  be  Divine;  for,  if  it 
were  not  so,  how  could  the  intelligent  Mussulman  ever  be, 
if  he  ever  is,  persuaded  to  abandon  the  one  God  of  his  faith, 
and  to  accept  what  must  seem  to  him  the  polytheism  of  the 
Christian  Trinity  ? 

Another  error,  or  rather  set  of  errors,  into  which  the 
archbishop  plunges,  is  that  he  assumes  positive  science  to  be 
materialistic,  and  materialism  to  involve  the  negation  of  God, 
of  immortality,  and  of  free  will.  This  imputation  of  mate- 
rialism, which  ought  never  to  have  been  so  lightly  made,  it  is 
quite  certain  that  the  majority  of  scientific  men  would  ear- 
nestly disclaim.  Moreover,  the  materialist,  as  such,  is  not 
under  any  logical  constraint  whatever  to  deny  either  the  ex- 
istence of  a  God,  or  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  or  free  will. 
One  is  almost  tempted  to  say  that  in  two  things  the  arch- 
bishop distances  competition :  first,  in  the  facility  w^ith  which 
he  loses  or  dispenses  with  the  links  of  his  own  chain  of  rea- 
soning; and,  secondly,  in  his  evident  inability  to  perceive, 
when  looking  sincerely  with  all  his  might,  real  and  essential 
distinctions  which  are  at  all  subtile,  which  are  not  broadly, 
and  almost  coarsely,  marked.  If  the  edge  of  a  distinction  be 
fine,  if  it  be  not  as  blunt  as  a  weaver's  beam,  it  fails  seem- 
ingly to  attract  his  attention.  "Whosoever  believes  sincerely 
in  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  as  taught  by 


PHILOSOPHICAL  INQUIRY.  105 

tlio  Apostle  Paul,  wliicli  all  Christians  profess  to  do,  must 
surelj  have  some  difficulty  in  conceiving  the  immortality  of 
the  soul  apart  from  that  of  the  body;  for,  if  the  apostle's 
preaching  and  the  Christian's  faith  be  not  vain,  and  the  body 
do  rise  again,  then  it  may  be  presumed  that  the  soul  and  it 
will  share  a  common  immortality,  as  they  have  shared  a  com- 
mon mortality.  So  far,  then,  from  materialism  being  the  ne- 
gation of  immortality,  the  greatest  of  the  apostles,  the  great 
Apostle  of  the  Gentiles,  earnestly  preached  materialism  as  es- 
sential to  the  life  which  is  to  come.  There  is  as  little  or  less 
justification  for  saying  that  materialism  involves  of  necessity 
the  denial  of  free  will.  The  facts  on  which  the  doctrine  of 
free  will  is  based  are  the  same  facts  of  observation,  whether 
spiritualism  or  materialism  be  the  accepted  faith,  and  the 
question  of  their  interpretation  is  not  essentially  connected 
with  the  one  or  the  other  faith  ;  the  spiritualist  may  consist- 
ently deny,  and  the  materialist  consistently  advocate,  free 
will.  In  like  manner,  the  belief  in  the  existence  of  God  is 
nowise  inconsistent  with  the  most  extreme  materialism,  for 
the  belief  is  quite  independent  of  the  facts  and  reasons  on 
which  that  faith  is  founded.  The  spiritualist  may  deny  God 
the  power  to  make  matter  think,  but  the  materialist  need  not 
deny  the  existence  of  God  because  he  holds  that  matter  may 
be  capable  of  thought.  Multitudes  may  logically  believe  that 
mind  is  inseparable  from  body  in  life  or  death — that  it  is 
born  with  it,  grows,  ripens,  decays,  and  dies  with  it,  without 
disbelieving  in  a  great  and  intelligent  Power  who  has  called 
man  into  being,  and  ordained  the  greater  light  to  rule  the  day 
and  the  lesser  light  to  rule  the  night. 

^'hat  an  unnecessary  horror  hangs  over  the  word  materi- 
alism !  It  has  an  ugly  sound  and  an  indefinite  meaning,  and 
is  well  suited,  therefore,  to  be  set  up  as  a  sort  of  moral 
scarecrow ;  but,  if  it  be  closely  examined,  it  will  be  found  to 
have  the  semblance  of  something  terrible,  and  to  be  empty 
of  any  real  harm.  In  the  assertion  that  mind  is  altogether  a 
function  of  matter,  there  is  no  more  actual  irreverence  than  in 


106  THE  LIMITS  OF 

asserting  that  matter  is  the  realization  of  mind ;  the  one  and 
the  other  proposition  being  equally  meaningless  so  far  as  they 
postulate  a  knowledge  of  any  thing  more  than  phenomena. 
"Whether  extension  be  visible  thought,  or  thought  invisible  ex- 
tension, is  a  question  of  a  choice  of  words,  and  not  of  a  choice 
of  conceptions.  To  those  who  cannot  conceive  that  any  or- 
ganization of  matter,  however  complex,  should  be  capable  of 
such  exalted  functions  as  those  which  are  called  mental,  is  it 
really  more  conceivable  that  any  organization  of  matter  can 
be  the  mechanical  instrument  of  the  complex  manifestations 
of  an  immaterial  mind  ?  Is  it  not  as  easy  for  an  omnipotent 
power  to  endow  matter  with  mental  functions  as  it  is  to 
create  an  immaterial  entity  capable  of  accomplishing  them 
through  matter  ?  Is  the  Creator's  arm  shortened,  so  that  He 
cannot  endow  matter  with  sensation  and  ideation?  It  is 
strangely  overlooked  by  many  who  write  on  this  matter,  that 
the  brain  is  not  a  dead  instrument,  but  a  living  organ,  with 
functions  of  a  higher  kind  than  those  of  any  other  bodily 
organ,  insomuch  as  its  organic  nature  and  structure  far  sur- 
pass those  of  any  other  organ.  What,  then,  are  those  func- 
tions if  they  are  not  mental  ?  N'o  one  thinks  it  necessary  to 
assume  an  immaterial  liver  behind  the  hepatic  structure,  in  or- 
der to  account  for  its  functions.  But  so  far  as  the  nature  of 
nerve  and  the  complex  structure  of  the  cerebral  convolutions 
exceed  in  dignity  the  hepatic  elements  and  structure,  so  far 
must  the  material  functions  of  the  brain  exceed  those  of  the 
liver.  Men  are  not  sufficiently  careful  to  ponder  the  wonder- 
ful operations  of  which  matter  is  capable,  or  to  reflect  on  the 
miracles  effected  by  it  which  are  continually  before  their  eyes. 
Are  the  properties  of  a  chemical  compound  less  mysterious 
essentially  because  of  the  familiarity  with  which  we  handle 
them  ?  Consider  the  seed  dropped  into  the  ground :  it  swells 
with  germinating  energy,  bursts  its  integuments,  sends  up- 
ward a  delicate  shoot,  which  grows  into  a  stem,  putting  forth 
in  due  season  its  leaves  and  flowers,  until  finally  a  beautiful 
structure  is  formed,  such  as  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  could  not 


PHILOSOPHICAL   INQUIRY.  1:07 

equal,  and  all  the  art  of  mankind  cannot  imitate.  And  yet 
all  these  processes  are  operations  of  matter;  for  it  is  not 
thought  necessary  to  assume  an  immaterial  or  spiritual  plant 
which  effects  its  purposes  through  the  agency  of  the  material 
structure  which  we  observe.  Surely  there  are  here  exhibited 
properties  of  matter  wonderful  enough  to  satisfy  any  one  of 
the  powers  that  may  be  inherent  in  it.  Arc  we,  then,  to  be- 
lieve that  the  highest  and  most  complex  development  of  or- 
ganic structure  is  not  capable  of  even  more  wonderful  opera- 
tions ?  Would  you  have  the  human  body,  which  is  a  micro- 
cosm containing  all  the  forms  and  powers  of  matter  organized 
in  the  most  delicate  and  complex  manner,  to  possess  lower 
powers  than  those  forms  of  matter  exhibit  separately  in  Na- 
ture? Trace  the  gradual  development  of  the  nervous  system 
through  the  animal  series,  from  its  first  germ  to  its  most  com- 
plex evolution,  and  let  it  be  declared  at  what  point  it  sudden- 
ly loses  all  its  inherent  properties  as  living  structure,  and  be- 
comes the  mere  mechanical  instrument  of  a  spiritual  entity. 
In  what  animal,  or  in  what  class  of  animals,  does  the  imma- 
terial principle  abruptly  intervene  and  supersede  the  agency 
of  matter,  becoming  the  entirely  distinct  cause  of  a  similar, 
though  more  exalted,  order  of  mental  phenomena?  To  ap- 
peal to  the  consciousness  of  every  man  for  the  proof  of  a 
power  within  him,  totally  distinct  from  any  function  of  the 
body,  is  not  admissible  as  an  argument,  while  it  is  admitted 
that  consciousness  can  make  no  observation  of  the  bodily  or- 
gan and  its  functions,  and  until  therefore  it  be  proved  that 
matter,  even  when  in  the  form  of  the  most  complex  organi- 
zation, is  incapable  of  certain  mental  functions.  "Why  may  it 
not,  indeed,  be  capable  of  consciousness,  seeing  that,  whether 
it  be  or  not,  the  mystery  is  equally  incomprehensible  to  us, 
and  must  be  reckoned  equally  simple  and  easy  to  the  Power 
which  created  matter  and  its  properties  ?  When,  again,  we 
are  told  that  every  part  of  the  body  is  in  a  constant  state  of 
change,  that  within  a  certain  period  every  particle  of  it  is  re- 
newed, and  yet  that  amid  these  changes  a  man  feels  that  he 


108  THE  LIMITS  OF 

remains  essentially  tlie  same,  we  perceive  nothing  inconsist- 
ent in  the  idea  of  the  action  of  a  material  organ ;  for  it  is  not 
absurd  to  suppose  that  in  the  brain  the  new  series  of  particles 
take  the  pattern  of  those  which  they  replace,  as  they  do  in 
other  organs  and  tissues  which  are  continually  changing  their 
substance  yet  preserve  their  identity.  Even  the  scar  of  a 
wound  on  the  finger  is  not  often  effaced,  but  grows  as  the 
body  grows:  why,  then,  assume  the  necessity  of  an  imma- 
terial principle  to  prevent  the  impression  of  an  idea  from  be- 
ing lost? 

The  truth  is,  that  men  have  disputed  vaguely  and  violently 
about  matter  and  motion,  and  about  the  impossibility  of  mat- 
ter affecting  an  immaterial  mind,  never  haviug  been  at  the 
pains  to  reflect  carefully  upon  the  different  kinds  of  matter 
and  the  corresponding  differences  of  kind  in  its  motions.  All 
sorts  of  matter,  diverse  as  they  are,  were  vaguely  matter — 
there  was  no  discrimination  made ;  and  all  the  manifold  and 
special  properties  of  matter  were  comprised  under  the  gen- 
eral term  motion.  This  was  not,  nor  could  it  lead  to,  good ; 
for  matter  really  rises  in  dignity  from  physical  matter  in 
Avhich  physical  properties  exist  to  chemical  matter  and  chem- 
ical forces,  and  from  chemical  matter  to  living  matter  and  its 
modes  of  force ;  and  then  in  the  scale  of  life  a  continuing  as- 
cent leads  from  the  lowest  kind  of  living  matter  with  its  force 
or  energy,  through  different  kinds  of  physiological  elements 
with  their  special  energies  or  functions,  to  the  highest  kind 
of  living  matter  with  its  force — viz.,  nerve-matter  and  nerve- 
force  ;  and,  lastly,  through  the  different  kinds  of  nerve-cells 
and  their  energies  to  the  most  exalted  agents  of  mental  func- 
tion. Obviously,  then,  simple  ideas  derived  from  observation 
of  mechanical  phenomena  cannot  fitly  be  applied  to  the  ex- 
planation of  the  functions  of  that  most  complex  combination 
of  elements  and  energies,  physical  and  chemical,  in  a  small 
space,  which  we  have  in  living  structure ;  to  speak  of  me- 
chanical vibration  in  nerves  and  nerve-centres  is  to  convey 
false  ideas  of  their  extremely  delicate  and  complex  energies, 


PHILOSOPHICAL  INQUIRY.  109 

and  thus  seriously  to  hinder  the  formation  of  more  just  con- 
ceptions. 

In  like  manner,  much  barren  discussion  has  been  owing 
to  the  undiscriminating  inclusion  of  all  kinds  of  mental  mani- 
festations under  the  vague  and  general  term  mind ;  for  there 
are  most  important  differences  in  the  nature  and  dignity  of 
so-called  mental  phenomena,  when  they  are  properly  observed 
and  analyzed.  Those  who  have  not  been  at  the  pains  to 
follow^  the  order  of  development  of  mental  phenomena  and 
to  make  themselves  acquainted  with  the  different  kinds  of 
functions  that  concur  to  form  what  we  call  mental  action, 
and  who  have  not  studied  the  differences  of  matter,  are  doing 
no  better  than  beating  the  air  w^hen  they  disclaim  against 
materialism.  By  rightly  submitting  the  understanding  to 
facts,  it  is  made  evident  that,  on  the  one  hand,  matter  rises 
in  dignity  and  function  until  its  energies  merge  insensibly 
into  functions  which  are  described  as  mental,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  there  are  gradations  of  mental  function,  the 
lowest  of  which  confessedly  do  not  transcend  the  functions 
of  matter.  The  burden  of  proving  that  the  Deus  ex  mo.cliind 
of  a  spiritual  entity  intervenes  somewhere,  and  where  it 
intervenes,  clearly  lies  upon  those  who  make  the  assertion  or 
who  need  the  hypothesis.  They  are  not  justified  in  arbitra- 
rily fabricating  an  hypothesis  entirely  inconsistent  with  ex- 
perience of  the  orderly  development  of  Nature,  which  even 
postulates  a  domain  of  Nature  that  human  senses  cannot  take 
any  cognizance  of,  and  in  then  calling  upon  those  who  reject 
their  assumption  to  disprove  it.  These  have  done  enough  if 
they  show  that  there  are  no  grounds  for  and  no  need  of  the 
hypothesis. 

Here  we  might  properly  take  leave  of  the  archbishop's 
address,  were  it  not  that  the  looseness  of  his  statements  and 
the  way  in  which  his  understanding  is  governed  by  the  old 
phrases  of  philosophical  disputes  tempt  further  criticism,  and 
make  it  a  duty  to  expose  aspects  of  the  subject  of  which  he 
does  not  evince  the  least  apprehension.     He  would,  we  ima- 


110  THE  LIMITS  OF 

gine,  be  hard  put  to  it  to  support  the  heavy  indictment  con- 
tained in  the  following  sentence  which  he  flings  off  as  he 
goes  heedlessly  forward  :  "  A  system  which  pretends  to  dis- 
pense with  the  ideas  of  God,  of  immortality,  of  free  agency, 
of  causation,  and  of  design,  would  seem  to  offer  few  attrac- 
tions." The  question  of  the  value  of  any  system  of  philosophy 
is  not,  it  may  be  observed  incidentally,  whether  it  is  unattrac- 
tive because  it  dispenses  with  received  notions,  still  less 
because  its  adversaries  imagine  that  it  must  dispense  with 
them;  but  it  is  whether  it  possesses  that  degree  of  funda- 
mental truth  which  will  avail  to  enlarge  the  knowledge  and 
to  attract  ultimately  the  belief  of  mankind.  History  does  not 
record  that  the  doctrines  of  Christianity  were  found  attractive 
by  the  philosophers  of  Greece  or  Rome  when  they  were  first 
preached  there ;  does,  indeed,  record  that  Paul  preaching  on 
Mars'  Hill  at  Athens,  the  city  of  intellectual  enlightenment, 
and  declaring  to  the  inhabitants  the  unknown  God  whom 
they  ignorantly  worshipped,  made  no  impression,  but  found 
it  prudent  to  depart  thence  to  Corinth,  nowise  renowned  at 
that  time  as  a  virtuous  city,  renowned,  indeed,  in  far  other 
wise.  We  have  not,  however,  quoted  the  foregoing  sentence 
in  order  to  repudiate  popular  attractiveness  as  a  criterion  of 
truth,  but  to  take  occasion  to  declare  the  wide  difference  be- 
tween the  modest  spirit  of  scientific  inquiry  and  the  confident 
dogmatism  of  the  so-called  Positive  Philosophy.  Science, 
recognizing  the  measure  of  what  it  can  impart  to  be  bounded 
by  the  existing  limits  of  scientific  inquiry,  makes  no  proposi- 
tion whatever  concerning  that  which  lies  beyond  these  lim- 
its;  equally  careful,  on  the  one  hand,  to  avoid  a  barren 
enunciation  in  words  of  what  it  cannot  apprehend  in 
thought,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  to  refrain  from  a  blind 
denial  of  possibihties  transcending  its  means  of  research.  A 
calm  acquiescence  in  ignorance  until  light  comes  is  its  atti- 
tude. It  must  be  borne  clearly  in  mind,  however,  that  this 
scrupulous  care  to  abstain  from  presumptuous  assertions  does 
not  warrant  the  imposition  of  any  arbitrary  barrier  to  the 


PHILOSOPHICAL  INQUIRY.  Ill 

re.lcli  of  its  powers,  but  is  quite  cousistent  with  the  convic- 
tion of  the  possibility  of  an  invasion  and  subjugation  of  the 
unknown  to  a  practically  unlimited  extent,  and  with  the  most 
strenuous  efforts  to  lessen  its  domain. 

The  wonder  is — and  the  more  it  is  considered  the  greater 
it  seems — that  human  intelligence  should  ever  have  grown  to 
the  height  either  of  affirming  or  of  denying  the  existence  of  a 
God.  Certainly  the  denial  implies,  even  if  the  affirmation 
does  not  also,  the  assumption  of  the  attributes  of  a  God  by 
him  who  makes  it.  Let  imagination  travel  unrestrained 
through  the  immeasurable  heavens,  past  the  myriads  of  orbs 
which,  revolving  in  their  appointed  paths,  constitute  our 
solar  system,  through  distances  which  words  cannot  express 
nor  mind  conceive  definitely,  to  other  suns  and  other  planet- 
ary systems ;  beyond  these  glimmer  in  the  vast  distance  the 
lights  of  more  solar  systems,  whose  rays,  extinguished  in  the 
void,  never  reach  our  planet :  still  they  are  not  the  end,  for 
as  thought  in  its  flight  leaves  them  behind,  and  they  vanish 
in  remote  space,  other  suns  appear,  until,  as  the  imagination 
strives  to  realize  their  immensity,  the  heavens  seem  almost 
an  infinite  A^oid,  so  small  a  space  do  the  scattered  clusters  of 
planets  fill.  Then  let  sober  reflection  take  up  the  tale,  and, 
remembering  how  small  a  part  of  the  heavenly  hosts  our 
solar  system  is,  and  how  small  a  part  of  our  solar  system 
the  earth  is,  consider  how  entirely  dependent  man,  and 
beast,  and  plant,  and  every  living  thing  are  upon  the  heat 
which  this  our  planet  receives  from  the  sun;  how  vege- 
tation flourishes  through  its  inspiring  influence,  and  the 
vegetation  of  the  past  in  long-buried  forests  gives  up  again 
the  heat  which  ages  ago  it  received  from  the  sun ;  how  animal 
life  is  sustained  by  the  life  of  the  vegetable  kingdom,  and  by 
the  heat  which  is  received  directly  from  the  sun;  and  hoAv 
man,  as  the  crown  of  living  things,  and  his  highest  mental 
energy,  as  the  crown  of  his  development,  depend  on  all  that 
has  gone  before  him  in  the  evolution  of  Nature — considering 
all  these  things,  docs  not  living  Nature  appear  but  a  small 


112  THE  LIMITS  OF 

and  incidental  by-play  of  the  sun's  energies  ?  Seems  it  not 
an  unspeakable  presumption  to  affirm  that  man  is  the  main 
end  and  purpose  of  creation  ?  Is  it  not  appalling  to  think 
that  he  should  dare  to  speak  of  what  so  far  surpasses  the 
reach  of  his  feeble  senses,  and  of  the  power  which  ordains 
and  governs  the  order  of  events — impiously  to  deny  the 
existence  of  a  God,  or  not  less  impiously  to  create  one  in  his 
image?  The  portion  of  the  universe  with  which  man  is 
brought  into  relation  by  his  existing  sentiency  is  but  a  frag- 
ment, and  to  measure  the  possibilities  of  the  infinite  unknown 
by  the  standard  of  what  he  knov/s  is  very  much  as  if  the 
oyster  should  judge  all  Nature  by  the  experience  gained  with- 
in its  shell — should  deny  the  existence  on  earth  of  a  human 
being,  because  its  intelligence  cannot  conceive  his  nature  or 
recognize  his  works.  Encompassing  us  and  transcending  our 
ken  is  a  universe  of  energies ;  how  can  man,  then,  the  "  feeble 
atom  of  an  hour,"  presume  to  affirm  whose  glory  the  heavens 
declare,  whose  handiwork  the  firmament  showeth?  Certain- 
ly true  science  does  not  so  dogmatize. 

Bacon,  in  a  well-known  and  often-quoted  passage,  has  re- 
marked, that  "  a  little  philosophy  inclineth  men's  minds  to 
Atheism,  but  depth  in  philosophy  bringeth  men's  minds  about 
to  religion ;  for  while  the  mind  of  man  looketh  upon  second 
causes  scattered,  it  may  sometimes  rest  in  them,  and  go  no 
further ;  but  when  it  beholdeth  tlie  chain  of  them,  confeder- 
ate and  linked  together,  it  must  needs  fly  to  Providence  and 
Deity."  It  is  not  easy  to^perceive,  indeed,  how  modern  sci- 
ence, which  makes  its  inductions  concerning  natural  forces 
from  observation  of  their  manifestations,  and  arrives  at 
generalizations  of  diflerent  forces,  can,  after  observation  of 
Nature,  avoid  the  generalization  of  an  intelligent  mental 
force,  linked  in  harmonious  association  and  essential  relations 
witli  other  forces,  but  leading  and  constraining  them  to  higher 
aims  of  evolution.  To  speak  of  such  evolution  as  the  course 
of  Nature  is  to  endow  an  undefined  agency  with  the  proper- 
ties which  are  commonly  assigned  to  a  god,  whether  it  bo 


PniLOSOPHICAL  INQUIRY.  113 

called  God  or  not.  The  nature,  aim,  and  power  of  this  su- 
preme intelligent  force,  working  so  far  as  we  know  from 
everlasting  to  everlasting,  it  is  plainly  impossible  that  man,  a 
finite  and  transient  part  of  ISTature,  should  comprehend.  To 
suppose  him  capable  of  doing  so,  would  be  to  suppose  him 
endowed  with  the  very  attributes  which,  having  only  in  part 
himself,  he  ascribes  in  the  whole  to  Deity. 

"Whether  the  low  savage  has  or  has  not  the  idea  of  a  God 
is  a  question  which  seems  hardly  to  deserve  the  amount  of 
attention  which  it  has  received.  It  is  certain  that  he  feels 
himself  surrounded  and  overruled  by  forces  the  natures  and 
laws  of  which  he  is  quite  ignorant  of,  and  that  he  is  apt  to 
interpret  them,  more  or  less  clearly,  as  the'  work  of  some 
being  of  like  passions  with  himself,  but  vastly  more  powerful, 
whom  it  is  his  interest  to  propitiate.  Indeed,  it  would  ap- 
pear, so  far  as  the  information  of  travellers  enables  us  to 
judge,  that  the  idea  entertained  of  God  by  the  savage  who 
has  any  such  idea  is  nearly  allied  to  that  which  civilized  peo- 
ple have  or  have  had  of  a  devil ;  for  it  is  the  vague  dread  of 
a  being  whose  delight  is  in  bringing  evil  upon  him  rather 
than  that  of  a  being  who  watches  over  and  protects  him. 
Being  ignorant  altogether  of  the  order  of  Nature,  and  of  the 
fixed  laws  under  which  calamities  and  blessings  alike  come, 
he  frames  a  dim,  vague,  and  terrible  embodiment  of  the  causes 
of  those  effects  which  touch  him  most  painfully.  TTill  it  be 
believed,  then,  that  the  Archbishop  of  York  actually  appeals 
to  the  instinct  of  the  savage  to  rebuke  the  alleged  atheism 
of  science  ?  Let  it  be  granted,  however,  that  the  alleged  in- 
stinct of  the  savage  points  to  a  God  and  not  to  a  devil  ruling 
the  world,  it  must  in  all  fairness  be  confessed  that  it  is  a  dim, 
undefined,  fearful  idea — if  that  can  be  called  an  idea  which 
form  has  none — having  no  relationship  to  the  conception  of 
a  God  which  is  cherished  among  civilized  people.  In  like 
manner  as  the  idea  of  a  devil  has  undergone  a  remarkable 
development  with  the  growth  of  intelligence  from  age  to  age, 
until  in  some  quarters  there  is  evinced  a  disposition  to  im- 


114  THE  LIMITS  OF 

prove  him  out  of  being,  so  the  conception  of  a  God  has  under- 
gone an  important  development  through  the  ages,  in  corre- 
spondence with  the  development  of  the  human  mind.  The 
conceptions  of  God  affirmed  by  different  revelations  notably 
reflect,  and  are  an  index  of,  the  intellectual  and  moral  char- 
acter of  the  people  to  whom  each  revelation  has  been  made, 
and  the  God  of  the  same  religion  does  unquestionably  advance 
with  the  mental  evolution  of  the  people  professing  it,  being 
differently  conceived  of  at  different  stages  of  culture.  Art, 
in  its  early  infancy,  when  it  is,  so  to  speak,  learning  its  steps, 
endeavors  to  copy  Nature,  and,  copying  it  badly,  exaggerates 
and  caricatures  it,  whence  the  savage's  crude  notion  of  a  God ; 
but  the  aim  and  work  of  the  highest  art  is  to  produce  by 
idealization  the  illusion  of  a  higher  reality,  whence  a  more 
exalted  and  spiritual  conception  of  Deity. 

Notwithstanding  the  archbishop's  charge  of  atheism 
against  science,  there  is  hardly  one,  if  indeed  there  be  even 
one,  eminent  scientific  inquirer  who  has  denied  the  existence 
of  God,  while  there  is  notably  more  than  one  who  has 
evinced  a  childlike  simplicity  of  faith.  The  utmost  claim  of 
scientific  skepticism  is  the  right  to  examine  the  evidence  of  a 
revelation  professing  to  be  Divine,  in  the  same  searching  way 
as  it  would  examine  any  other  evidence — to  endeavor  to  trace 
the  origin  and  development,  and  to  weigh  the  value,  of  re- 
ligious conceptions  as  of  other  conceptions.  It  violates  the 
fundamental  habit  of  the  scientific  mind,  the  very  principle 
of  its  nature,  to  demand  of  it  the  unquestioning  acceptance 
of  any  form  of  faith  which  tradition  may  hand  down  as 
divinely  revealed.  When  the  followers  of  a  religion  appeal, 
as  the  followers  of  every  religion  do,  in  proof  of  it,  to  the 
testimony  of  miraculous  events  contrary  to  the  experience 
of  the  present  order  of  Nature,  there  is  a  scientific  fact  not 
contrary  to  experience  of  the  order  of  Nature  which  they 
overlook,  but  which  it  is  incumbent  to  bear  in  mind,  viz. : 
That  eager  and  enthusiastic  disciples  sometimes  have  visions 
and  dream  dreams,  and  that  they  are  apt  innocently  to  ima- 


rniLOSOPmcAL  inquiry.  115 

gine  or  purposely  to  invent  extraordinary  or  supernatural 
events  worthy  the  imagined  importance  of  the  subject,  and 
answering  the  bnrning  zeal  of  their  faith.  The  calm  observer 
and  sincere  interpreter  of  Nature  cannot  set  capricious  or 
arbitrary  bounds  to  his  inquiries  at  any  point  where  another 
may  assert  that  he  ought  to  do  so ;  he  cannot  choose  but 
claim  and  maintain  the  right  to  search  and  try  what  any 
man,  Jew  or  Gentile,  Mussulman  or  Bramin,  has  declared 
sacred,  and  to  see  if  it  be  true.  And,  if  it  be  not  true  to  him, 
what  matters  it  how  true  it  be?  The  theologian  tells  him 
that  the  limits  of  philosophical  inquiry  are  where  faith  be- 
gins, but  he  is  concerned  to  find  out  where  faith  does  begin, 
and  to  examine  what  sort  of  evidence  the  evidence  of  things 
unseen  is.  And  if  this  right  of  free  inquiry  be  denied  him, 
then  is  denied  him  the  right  to  doubt  what  any  visionary,  or 
fanatic,  or  madman,  or  impostor,  may  choose  to  proclaim  as  a 
revelation  from  the  spiritual  world. 

Toward  the  close  of  his  lecture  the  archbishop,  breaking 
out  into  peroration,  becomes  violently  contemptuous  of  the 
philosopher  who,  "  with  his  sensations  sorted  and  tied  up 
and  labelled  to  the  utmost,  might,"  he  thinks,  "  chance  to 
find  himself  the  most  odious  and  ridiculous  being  in  all  the 
multiform  creation.  A  creature  so  glib,  so  wise,  so  full  of 
discourse,  sitting  in  the  midst  of  creation  with  all  its  mystery 
and  wonder,  and  persuading  you  that  he  is  the  master  of  its 
secrets,  and  that  there  is  nothing  but  what  he  knows !  "  It 
is  not  very  difficult  to  raise  a  laugh  by  drawing  a  caricature ; 
but  it  was  hardly,  perhaps,  worthy  the  lecturer,  the  subject, 
and  the  audience,  to  exhibit  on  such  an  occasion  an  archi- 
episcopal  talent  for  drawing  caricatures.  As  we  have  al- 
ready intimated,  this  philosopher,  "  so  glib,  so  wise,  so  full 
of  discourse,"  does  not  profess  to  know  nearly  so  much  of 
the  mystery  and  wonder  of  creation  as  the  archbishop  does. 
There  is  more  flourishing  language  of  the  same  sort  before 
the  discourse  ends,  but  it  would  be  unprofitable  to  transcribe 
or  criticise  it;  and  it  is  only  right  to  the  lecturer  to  say  that 


116  THE  LIMITS  OF 

lie  is  near  his  conclusion  when  lie  works  himself  up  into  this 
vituperative  and  somewhat  hysterical  ecstasy.  The  follow- 
ing passage  may  be  quoted,  however,  as  instructive  in  more 
respects  than  one : 

"The  world  offers  just  now  the  spectacle,  humiliating  to  us  in 
many  ways,  of  millions  of  people  clinging  to  their  old  idolatrous  reli- 
gions, and  refusing  to  change  them  even  for  a  higher  form  ;  while  in 
Christian  Europe  thousands  of  the  most  cultivated  class  are  beginning 
to  consider  atheism  a  permissible  or  even  a  desirable  thing.  The  very 
instincts  of  the  savage  rebuke  us.  But  just  when  we  seem  in  danger 
of  losing  all  may  come  the  moment  of  awakening  to  the  dangers  of 
our  loss.  A  world  where  thought  is  a  secretion  of  the  brain-gland — 
where  free  will  is  the  dream  of  a  madman  that  thinks  he  is  an  em- 
peror, though  naked  and  in  chains — where  God  is  not  or  at  least  not 
knowable,  such  is  not  the  world  as  we  have  learned  it,  on  Ivhich 
great  lives  have  been  lived  out,  great  self-sacrifices  dared,  great  piety 
and  devotion  have  been  bent  on  softening  the  sin,  the  ignorance,  and 
the  misery.  It  is  a  world  from  which  the  sun  is  withdrawn,  and  with 
it  all  light  and  life.  But  this  is  not  our  world  as  it  was,  not  the  world 
of  our  fathers.  To  live  is  to  think  and  to  will.  To  think  is  to  see 
the  chain  of  facts  in  creation,  and  passing  along  its  golden  links  to 
find  the  hand  of  God  at  its  beginning,  as  we  saw  His  handiwork  in  its 
course.  And  to  will  is  to  be  able  to  know  good  and  evil ;  and  to  will 
aright  is  to  submit  the  will  entirely  to  a  will  higher  than  ours.  So 
that  with  God  alone  can  we '  find  true  knowledge  and  true  rest,  the 
vaunted  fruits  of  philosophy." 

Was  ever  before  such  a  terrible  indictment  against  Chris- 
tianity drawn  by  a  Christian  prelate?  Its  doctrines  have 
now  been  preached  for  nearly  two  thousand  years ;  they 
have  had  the  aids  of  vast  armies,  of  incalculable  wealth,  of 
the  greatest  genius  and  eloquence  ;  they  are  embodied  in  the 
results  of  conquests,  in  the  sublimest  works  of  art,  in  some 
of  the  noblest  specimens  of  oratory,  in  the  very  organization 
of  modern  society;  thousands  upon  thousands  have  died 
martyrs  to  their  faith  in  them,  and  thousands  more  have  been 
made  martyrs  for  want  of  faith  in  them;  they  have  been 
carried  to  the  darkest  places  of  the  earth  by  the  vehicles  of 
commerce,   have  been  proclaimed  by  the  messengers  and 


PHILOSOPHICAL  INQUIRY.  117 

backed  by  the  moral  power  of  a  higher  civilization;  they 
are  almost  identified  with  the  spirit  and  results  of  modern 
scientific  progress :  all  these  advantages  they  have  had, 
and  yet  the  archbishop  can  do  no  more  than  point  to  the 
spectacle  of  millions  of  people  clinging  to  their  old  idola- 
trous religions,  and  to  thousands  of  the  most  cultivated  class 
in  Christian  Europe  who  are  beginning  to  consider  atheism  a 
permissible  or  even  a  desirable  thing !  AYhether  it  be  really 
true  that  so  many  of  the  cultivated  class  in  Europe  are 
gravitating  toward  atheism  we  cannot  say ;  but,  if  the  allega- 
tion be  true,  it  may  well  be  doubted  whether  an  appeal  to 
the  instincts  of  the  savage  who  persists  in  clinging  to  his 
idolatry  will  avail  to  convince  them  of  their  error.  It  is  not 
very  consistent  on  the  archbishop's  part  to  make  such  an  ap- 
peal, who  in  another  paragraph  of  his  lecture  emphatically 
enjoins  on  philosophy  not  to  banish  God,  freedom,  duty,  and 
immortality  from  the  field  of  its  inquiries,  adjuring  it  solemnly 
never  to  consent  to  abandon  these  highest  subjects  of  study. 
Another  comment  on  the  passage  above  quoted  which  sug- 
gests itself  is  that  men  have  undergone  great  self-sacrifices, 
sufferings,  and  death,  for  a  bad  cause  with  as  firm  and  cheer- 
ful a  resolution  as  good  men  have  for  the  best  cause ;  to  die 
for  a  faith  is  no  proof  whatever  of  the  truth  of  it,  nor  by 
any  means  always  the  best  service  which  a  man  may  render  it. 
Atheism  counts  its  martyrs  as  well  as  Christianity.  Jordano 
Bruno,  the  friend  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  was  condemned  for 
atheism,  sentenced  to  death,  and,  refusing  to  recant,  burned 
at  the  stake.  Yanini,  who  suff'ered  death  as  an  atheist, 
might  have  been  pardoned  the  moment  before  his  execution 
if  he  would  have  retracted  his  doctrines ;  but  he  chose  to  be 
burned  to  ashes  rather  than  retract.  To  these  might  be 
added  others  who  have  gone  through  much  persecution  and 
grievous  suffering  for  a  cause  which  the  Archbishop  of  York 
would  count  the  worst  for  which  a  man  could  suffer.  How 
many  Christians  of  one  sect  have  undergone  lingering  tor- 
tures and  cruel  deaths  at  the  hands  of  Christians  of  another 


118  THE  LIMITS  OF 

sect  for  the  sake  of  small  and  non-essential  points  of  doc- 
trine in  which  only  they  differed — for  points  at  issue  so  mi- 
nute as  to  "  be  scarcely  visible  to  the  nicest  theological  eye !  " 
Christianity  has  sometimes  been  a  terrible  war-cry,  and  it 
must  be  confessed  that  Christians  have  been  good  persecu- 
tors. When  the  passions  of  men  have  worked  a  faith  into 
enthusiasm,  they  will  suffer  and  die,  and  inflict  suffering  and 
death,  for  any  cause,  good  or  bad.  The  appeal  to  martyr- 
dom of  professors  is  therefore  of  small  worth  as  an  argu- 
ment fi)r  the  truth  of  their  doctrine.  Pity  'tis  that  it  is  so, 
for,  if  it  were  otherwise,  if  self-sacrifice  in  a  cause  would  suf- 
fice to  establish  it,  what  a  noble  and  powerful  argument  in 
support  of  the  Christian  verities  might  archbishops  and  bish- 
ops offer,  in  these  sad  times  of  luxury  and  unbelief  when  so 
many  are  lapsing  into  atheism  ! 

But  we  must  bring  to  an  end  these  reflections,  Avhich  are 
some  of  those  that  have  been  suggested  by  the  perusal  of  the 
archiepiscopal  address  on  the  "Limits  of  Philosophical  In- 
quiry." Though  heavy  charges  are  laid  against  modern  sci- 
ence, they  are  made  in  a  thoughtless  rather  than  a  bitter 
spirit,  while  the  absence  of  bigotry  and  the  general  candor 
displayed  may  justify  a  hope  that  the  author  will,  on  reflec- 
tion, perceive  his  opinions  to  require  further  consideration, 
and  his  statements  to  be  too  indiscriminate  and  sweeping. 
On  the  whole  there  is,  we  think,  less  reason  to  apprehend 
harm  to  scientific  inquiry  from  this  discharge  of  the  arch- 
bishop's feelings,  than  to  apprehend  harm  to  those  who  are 
obstinately  defending  the  religious  position  against  the  attack 
which  is  thought  imminent.  For  he  has  used  his  friends 
badly:  he  has  exposed  their  entire  flank  to  the  enemy; 
while  he  would  distinctly  have  philosophy  concern  itself 
with  the  highest  subjects — God,  freedom,  and  immortality — 
despising  a  philosophy  which  forbears  to  do  so,  and  pointing 
out  how  miserably  it  falls  short  of  its  highest  mission,  he 
warns  philosophy  in  the  same  breath  that  there  is  a  point  at 
whioli  its  teachinpf  ends. 


PHILOSOPUICAL  INQUIRY.  110 

"Philosophy,  wliilc  she  is  teaching  morals  and  religion, 
will  soon  come  to  ii  point  where  her  teaching  tends.  .  .  She 
will  send  her  scholars  to  seek  in  revelation  and  practical 
obedience  the  higher  culture  that  she  can  only  commence.'" 

The  pity  of  the  matter  is,  that  we  are  not  furnished  with 
a  word  of  guidance  as  to  where  the  hitherto  and  no  farther 
point  is.  "With  brave  and  flourishing  words  he  launches  the 
inquirer  on  a  wide  waste  of  waters,  but  without  a  rudder  to 
guide  him,  or  a  compass  to  steer  by.  Is  he  to  go  on  so  long 
as  what  he  discovers  is  in  conformity  with  the  Gospel  accord- 
ing to  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  but  furl-to  his  sails,  cease  his 
exertions,  and  go  down  on  his  knees,  the  moment  his  discov- 
eries clash  with  the  faith  according  to  the  Thirty-nine  Arti- 
cles ?  What  guarantee  have  we  that  he  will  be  content  to 
do  so  ?  In  withholding  the  Scriptures  from  the  people,  and 
shutting  off  philosophy  entirely  from  the  things  that  belong 
to  faith,  the  Church  of  Eome  occupies  a  strong  and  almost 
impregnable  position  ;  for,  if  there  be  no  reading  there  will 
be  no  inquiry,  and  if  there  be  no  inquiry  there  will  be  no 
doubt,  and  if  there  be  no  doubt  there  will  be  no  disbelief. 
But  the  union  of  philosophical  inquiry  and  religious  faith  is 
not  a  natural  union  of  kinds ;  and  it  is  diflficult  to  see  how 
the  product  of  it  can  be  much  different  from  the  hybrid 
products  of  other  unnatural  unions  of  different  kinds — can 
be  other  than  sterile,  when  it  is  not  monstrous. 


II.— THE  THEORY  OF  VITALITY.* 

It  has  been  the  custom  of  certain  discij^les  of  the  so- 
called  Positive  Philosophy  to  repudiate  as  extravagant  the 
well-known  opinion  of  Protagoras,  that  man  was  the  meas- 
ure of  the  universe.  If  the  proposition  be  understood  of 
man  as  he  is  known  to  himself  by  the  revelations  of  self- 
consciousness,  there  is  unquestionably  great  reason  for  its 
rejection  ;  but,  if  it  be  applied  to  him  as  an  objective  study, 
it  is  manifest  that  modern  science  is  tending  to  prove  it  by 
no  means  so  absurd  as  it  has  been  sometimes  deemed.  Day 
by  day,  indeed,  is  it  becoming  more  and  more  clear  that,  as 
Sir  T.  Browne  has  it,  man  "  parallels  Nature  in  the  cosmog- 
raphy of  himself;  "  that,  in  truth,  "we  are  that  bold  and 
adventurous  piece  of  Nature  which  he  that  studies  wisely 
learns  in  a  compendium  what  others  labor  at  in  a  divided 
piece  and  endless  volume."  t  The  "  heaven-descended  yva9i 
creavrSv  "  acquires  new  value  as  a  maxim  inculcating  on  man 
the  objective  study  of  himself. 

The  earliest  cultivators  of  Grecian  philosophy — Thales, 
Anaximenes,  and  Diogenes  of  Apollonia — did  seek  objec- 
tively for  the  apx-fi  or  first  principle  of  things  common  to 
man  and  the  rest  of  Nature.  This  primitive  kind  of  induc- 
tion was  soon,  however,  abandoned  for  the  easier  and  speed- 
ier deduction  from  the  subjective  facts  of  consciousness ;  so 
that,  as  the  German  philosopher  is  said  to  have  done  with 

*  British  and  Foreign  Medico- Chir.  lieview,  No.  G4, 1863. 
+  FeUgio  Medici. 


THE   TUEORY   OF  VITALITY.  121 

the  elephant,  man  constructed  the  laws  of  an  external  world 
out  of  the  depths  of  his  own  consciousness.  Because  an  in- 
dividual was  conscious  of  certain  passions  which  influenced 
liis  conduct,  he  fancied  that  natural  hodies  were  affected  in 
their  relations  to  one  another  by  like  passions.  Hence  the 
phenomena  of  Nature  were  explained  by  sympathies,  antip- 
athies, loves,  discords :  oil  '  had  an  antipathy  to  water ; 
Nature  abhorred  a  vacuum ;  Love  was  the  creative  force 
which  produced  development  and  harmony ;  Hate,  the  de- 
structive force  which  produced  disorder  and  discord.  The 
method  was  only  a  phase  of  the  anthropomorphism  by  which 
the  Dryad  was  placed  in  the  tree,  the  Naiad  in  the  fountain, 
and  the  gods  of  mankind  were  created  by  man. 

The  result  of  such  a  method  was  inevitable.  AYhen  in  a 
language  there  is  but  one  word  for  two  or  three  different 
meanings,  as  happens  in  all  languages  before  the  cultivation 
of  science — when,  for  example,  the  loadstone  is  said  to  attract 
iron,  the  earth  to  attract  heavy  bodies,  the  plant  to  attract 
moisture,  and  one  mind  to  attract  another,  without  further 
differentiation — there  necessarily  is  an  ambiguity  about 
words;  disputes  thereupon  arise,  and  the  unavoidable  issue 
is  sophistry  and  sophists.  That  was  a  result  which  the  in- 
genious and  active  mind  of  Greece  soon  reached.  In  scien- 
tific nomenclature  it  is  constantly  becoming  necessary  to  dis- 
card words  which  are  in  common  use,  because  of  their  vague- 
ness and  want  of  precision;  for  as  it  is  with  life  objectively, 
and  as  it  is  with  cognition  or  life  subjectively,  so  must  it  be 
with  the  language  in  which  the  phenomena  are  expressed. 
A  scientific  nomenclature  must  rightly  present  a  progress 
from  the  general  to  the  special,  must  reflect  in  its  increasing 
specialization  the  increased  specialization  of  human  adapta- 
tion to  external  Nature.  As  might  be  expected,  Plato  and 
Aristotle  both  recognized  the  evil  in  Greece,  and  both  tried 
to  check  it.  The  metaphysics,  analytics,  etc.,  of  the  latter 
have  been  described  as  a  dictionary  of  general  terms,  "  the 
process  throughout  being  first  to  discover  and  establish  defi- 
6 


122  THE  THEORY 

nite  meanings,  and  then  to  appropriate  to  eacli  a  several 
word."  *  But  it  is  in  vain  to  attempt  to  establish  words  ex- 
cept as  living  outgrowths  of  actual  facts  in  Nature.  The 
method  was  a  mistaken  one ;  there  was  not  an  intending  of 
the  mind  to  the  realities  of  external  N'ature,  and  knowledge 
was  barren,  wanting  those  "fruits  and  invented  works" 
which  Bacon  pronounces  to  be,  as  it  were,  "  sponsors  and 
sureties  for  the  truth  of  philosophy." 

Much  the  same  thing  happened  in  the  earlier  part  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  The  mysticism  and  sophistry  which  then  pre- 
vailed, the  endless  and  unprofitable  but  learned  and  ingenious 
disputes  concerning  empty  propositions  and  words  which  had 
no  definite  meanings,  might  be  said  to  represent  the  wasted 
efiTorts  and  unavailing  strength  of  a  blind  giant.  But  as  the 
infant,  moved  by  an  internal  impulse,  at  first  strives  uncon- 
sciously for  its  mother's  breast  and  draws  its  nourishment 
therefrom,  gradually  awakening  thereby  to  a  consciousness 
of  the  mother  who  supplies  it,  so  the  human  mind  for  a  time 
gathered  unconsciously  the  material  of  its  knowledge  from 
Nature,  until  it  was  gradually  awakened  to  a  full  conscious- 
ness of  the  fruitful  bosom  which  was  supplying  it.  The  al- 
chemist, moved  by  his  avarice  and  the  instinct  of  a  unity  in 
Nature,  and  the  astrologer,  moved  by  the  feeling  of  a  destiny 
governing  human  actions,  both  lighted  on  treasures  which, 
though  not  then  appreciated,  were  yet  not  lost ;  for  of  astrol- 
ogy came  astronomy,  and  from  alchemy,  in  the  fulness  of 
time,  was  born  chemistry.  In  Eoger  Bacon,  who  successfully 
interrogated  Nature  in  the  spirit  of  the  inductive  method,  we 

*  Coleridge's  Literary  Correspondence.  It  is  for  this  attempt,  praise- 
worthy surely  as  far  as  it  went,  that  Bacon  is  unduly  severe  upon  Aristotle 
in  some  parts.  Thus :  "  And  herein  I  cannot  a  little  marvel  at  the  philoso- 
pher Aristotle  that  did  proceed  in  such  a  spirit  of  difference  and  contradic- 
tion toward  all  antiquity,  undertaking  not  only  to  form  new  words  of  sci- 
ence at  pleasure,  but  to  confound  and  extinguish  all  ancient  wisdom,"  (De 
Augmentis  Scientiarum.)  And  again :  "  Aristotle,  as  though  he  had  been 
of  the  race  of  the  Ottomans,  thought  he  could  not  reign  except  the  first  thing 
he  did  he  killed  all  his  brethren,'"    (Ibid,) 


OF  VITALITY.  123 

SCO  tlio  liuman  mind  instinctively  and,  as  it  were,  imcon- 
seiously  striving  after  tlie  true  source  of  knowledge ;  while  in 
the  Chancellor  Bacon,  who  established  the  principles  and 
systematized  the  rules  of  the  inductive  philosophy,  we  see 
it  awakened  to  a  clear  apprehension  of  the  necessity  of  doing 
with  design  and  method  that  which  in  an  imperfect  manner 
it  had  for  some  time  been  blindly  aiming  at.  But  as  it  is 
with  the  infant,  so  it  is  with  humanity:  action  preceded  con^ 
sciousness,  and  Bacon  was  the  efflux  of  a  spirit  which  pre- 
vailed, and  not  the  creator  of  it. 

The  n^cthod  of  investigation  has  accordingly  been  com- 
pletely reversed.  Instead  of  beginning  with  himself  and 
passing  thence  to  external  !N"ature,  man  begins  v>'ith  Nature 
and  ends  with  himself;  he  is  the  complex  to  which  his  in- 
vestigations ascend  step  by  step  through  progressively  in- 
creasing complications  of  the  simple.  Not  only  so,  but  the 
necessity  of  studying  himself  objectively  is  fully  recognized  ; 
it  is  not  the  subjective  feeling  of  heat  or  cold  in  a  feverish 
patient,  but  the  figure  at  which  the  thermometer  stands,  that 
is  now  appealed  to  as  the  trustworthy  index  of  the  real  tem- 
perature. The  development  of  the  senses,  or,  in  other  words, 
the  increased  specialty  of  human  adaptation  to  external  Na- 
ture, has  been,  as  the  progress  of  science  proves,  the  founda- 
tion of  intellectual  advance ;  the  understanding  has  been  de- 
veloped through  the  senses,  and  has  in  turn  constructed  in- 
struments for  extending  the  action  of  the  senses.*  The  tele- 
scope has  merely  been  a  means  for  enabling  the  eye  to  pene- 
trate into  distant  space,  and  to  observe  the  motions  of  worlds 
which  the  unaided  vision  Vv^ould  never  have  revealed  ;  by  the 
microscope  the  minute  structure  of  tissues  and  the  history  of 

*  A  great  desideratum  is  a  history  of  such  development  of  the  Benses  : 
"  Wir  besitzen  gar  treffliche  Werke  uber  die  Geschichte  von  Schlachten 
und  Staatsformen,  genaue  Tagebucher  von  KOnigen  und  flcissige  Verzeich- 
iiisse  von  den  SchOpfungen  der  Dichter.  Aber  den  wichtigsten  Beitrag  zu 
einer  Bildungsgeschichte  des  Menschen  in  der  eingreifendsten  Bedeutung 
des  Wovtes  hat  noch  Niemand  geliefert.  Una  fehlt  eine  Entwickelungs- 
ge?chii;hte  der  Sinne."— ^Moleschott,  Kreislmif  des  Lebens. 


124  THE  THEORY 

the  little  world  of  the  organic  cell  have  been  made  known  ; 
the  balance  has  demonstrated  the  indestructibility  of  matter, 
and  has  supplied  to  science  the  exactness  of  the  numerical 
method ;  and,  in  the  electric  stream,  there  has  been  found  a 
means  of  investigating  nerve-action,  like  that  which  there  is 
in  polarized  light  for  ascertaining  the  internal  condition  of 
crystallized  bodies.  Who  would  have  ventured  to  predict 
some  time  since  that  it  would  ever  be  possible  to  measure 
the  speed  at  which  an  impulse  of  the  will  travels  along  the 
nerves  ?  *  And  who  will  venture  to  say  that  it  will  not  at  a 
future  time  be  possible  to  measure  the  velocity  with  which 
one  idea  calls  up  another  in  the  brain  ?  Biology  must  plainly 
of  necessity  be  the  last  and  most  difficult  study,  for  it  pre- 
supposes the  other  sciences  as  vital  force  supposes  inferior 
forces ;  but  it  is  the  evident  tendency  of  advancing  knowl- 
edge to  bring  life  more  and  more  within  the  compass  of  sci- 
entific investigation.  And  if  it  be  sometimes  made  a  reproach 
to  science,  as  it  was  by  Comte,  that  it  has  not  discovered  the 
laws  of  life,  it  may  well  rest  calm  under  the  censure,  point- 

*  Such  an  eminent  physiologist  as  Miiller  could  venture  to  predict  the 
impossibility  thereof.  In  his  Physiology  he  says  :  "  Wir  werden  auch  wohl 
nie  die  Mittel  gewinnen  die  Geschwindigkeit  der  Nervenwirkung  zu  ermit- 
teln  da  uns  die  Vergleich  ungeheurer  Entfernung  felht  aus  der  die  Schnel- 
ligkeit  einer  dem  Nerven  in  dieser  Hinsicht  analogen  Wirkung  des  Licht 
berechnet  werden  kann,"  With  which  compare  Helmboltz:  "  Ueber  die 
Methoden  kleinste  Zeittheilchen  zu  messen,"  etc.    1850. 

As  long  as  physiologists  considered  it  necessary  to  refer  the  operations 
of  the  nerves  to  the  extension  of  an  imponderable  or  psychical  principle,  it 
might  well  appear  incredible  that  the  rapidity  of  the  stream  should  be 
measurable  within  the  limits  of  the  animal  body.  At  present  we  know, 
from  the  investigations  of  Du  Bois-Reymond  on  the  electro-motor  proper- 
ties of  nerves,  that  the  activity  by  which  the  propagation  of  a  stimulus  is 
accomplished  is  closely  connected  Avith  an  altered  arrangement  of  their  ma- 
terial molecules— perhaps  even  essentially  determined  by  them.  Accord- 
ingly, the  process  of  conduction  in  nerves  may  belong  to  the  series  of  con- 
tinuous molecular  operations  of  ponderable  bodies,  in  which,  for  example, 
the  conduction  of  sound  in  the  air,  or  the  combustion  in  a  tube  filled  with 
an  explosive  mixture,  is  to  be  reckoned.  It  is  not  surprising  therefore," 
he  adds,  "  that  the  speed  of  conduction  should  be  very  moderate."  (XJcber 
die  Methoden,  etc.) 


OF  VITALITY.  125 

ing  to  the  history  of  the  earth  to  show  that  Nature,  having 
done  all  else,  required  a  long  period  before  it  accomplished 
the  evolution  of  life. 

In  spite,  then,  of  a  desire  on  the  part  of  some  persons  to 
separate  biology  from  the  other  sciences,  and,  notwithstand- 
ing the  alarm  occasionally  displayed  with  regard  to  the  dig- 
nity of  vitality,  it  is  the  certain  tendency  of  advancing 
knowledge  to  bring  a  science  of  life  into  close  and  indissolu- 
ble relations  with  other  sciences,  and  thus  to  establish  in 
cognition,  or  to  reflect  in  consciousness,  the  unity  which 
exists  in  Nature.  AYhen,  in  ancient  times,  life  Avas  assigned 
to  the  stars,  the  air,  the  water,  a  sort  of  unity  Avas  recog- 
nized, but  recognized  only  by  explaining  Nature  from  a  very 
imperfect  knowledge  of  man ;  now  the  task  is  to  explain  man 
on  the  basis  of  an  increasing  knowledge  of  Nature,  and  in 
that  way  to  demonstrate  the  unity  of  the  whole.  "What  must 
be  the  result  ?  Nothing  less,  indeed,  than  the  reconciliation 
of  the  ideal  and  the  real,  the  identification  of  subjective  and 
objective.  As  life  is  a  condition  in  Avhich  an  intimate  corre- 
lation exists  between  the  individual  and  Nature,  it  is  CA^ident 
that,  while  Plato  dealt  only  with  ideas  of  the  mind,  his  sys- 
tem must  remain  comparatively  unprofitable ;  but  it  is  evi- 
dent also  that,  since  Ave  have  learned  to  discover  the  Imcs  or 
ideas  in  Nature  of  which  ideas  in  the  mind  are  correlates,  it 
becomes  possible  to  find  in  Nature  an  interpretation  of 
Plato's  true  ideas.*  Once  for  all,  it  may  perhaps  be  taken 
for  granted  that  the  ideas  of  genius  never  can  be  meaningless ; 
for  its  mental  life  is  a  reflection  in  consciousness  of  the  un- 
conscious life  of  Nature.  How  excellently  has  this  been  ex- 
emplified in  him  who  embodied  in  poetical  form  the  scientific 
spirit  of  this  age  !     It  was  the  great  characteristic  of  Goethe, 

*  "But  it  is  manifest  that  Plato,  in  his  opinion  of  ideas  as  one  that  had 
a  wit  of  elevation  situate  as  upon  a  clilf,  did  descry 'that  forms  were  the 
true  object  of  knowledge,'  but  lost  the  real  fruit  of  his  opinion  by  consider- 
ing of  forms  as  absolutely  abstracted  from  matter,  and  not  confined  and  de- 
termined by  matter ;  and  so  turning  his  opinion  on  theology,  wherewith  all 
his  natural  philosophy  is  infected."— Z)3  Aug.  Sclent. 


126  THE  THEORY 

as  Lavater  justly  said  of  him,  to  give  a  poetical  form  to  tlic 
real ;  he  proved,  in  fact,  that  science,  in  place  of  rendering 
poetry  impossible,  opened  a  field  for  the  highest  poetry.  His 
romance  of  the  Elective  Affinities  {Wahlverwandschaften) 
starts  from  the  chemical  affinities  of  elements,  and  applies 
such  affinities  to  human  beings,  therein  exactly  reversing  the 
old  method,  which,  starting  from  the  phenomena  of  self-con- 
sciousness, applied  the  passions  of  the  human  mind  to  the 
phenomena  of  external  Nature.  Of  Goethe  it  may  be  justly 
said,  that  in  him  the  ideal  and  the  real  were  happily  blended; 
that  he  embodied  the  scientific  spirit  of  the  age,  and  yet  was 
in  some  respects  an  advance  upon  it ;  that  he  was  a  prophecy 
of  that  which  must  be  a  course  of  development  of  the  human 
mind  if  it  be  destined  to  develop. 

The  foregoing  general  sketch  of  the  course  and  tendency 
of  knowledge  is  fully  justified  by  the  present  aspect  of  sci- 
ence. When  ISTature  was  first  examined  objectively  the  dif- 
ferences in  matter  appeared  manifold,  and  its  modes  of  energy 
or  activity — that  is,  its  forces — appeared  many  also.  On  a 
more  careful  use  of  the  senses,  however — in  fact,  by  the  ap- 
plication of  the  delicate  balance  to  the  products  of  combus- 
tion— it  became  evident  that  one  form  of  matter  only  disap- 
peared to  reappear  in  another  form ;  that  it  never  perished, 
but  only  changed.  Elementary  matter  tlms  passes  upward 
into  chemical  and  organic  compounds,  and  then  downward 
from  organic  to  chemical,  and  from  chemical  compounds  to 
its  elementary  condition.  Out  of  dust  man  is  formed  by  an 
upward  transformation  of  matter,  and  to  dust  he  returns  by 
a  retrograde  metamorphosis  thereof.  Corresponding  with 
the  changes  in  the  form  of  matter  are  changes  in  its  modes 
of  energy  or  its  forces ;  to  different  combinations  and  ar- 
rangements of  molecules  correspond  diff'erent  modes  of  en- 
ergy. Eorce  therefore  is  eternal,  like  matter,  and  passes 
through  a  corresponding  cycle  of  transformations.  The  cor- 
relation and  conservation  of  forces,  which  have  always  been 
more   or  less   clearly  recognized  as  necessities   of  human 


OF  VITALITY.  127 

thought,  are  now  accepted  as  scientific  axioms,  and  are  daily 
receiving  experimental  demonstration.* 

Though  it  may  seem  difficult  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that 
there  is  fundamentally  but  one  natural  force  which  manifests 
itself  under  different  modes,  yet  such  a  supposition  at  present 
transcends  the  domain  of  science.  As  a  matter  of  fact  we  are 
compelled,  in  order  to  form  a  satisfactory  conception  of  mat- 
ter and  its  forces,  to  regard  it  under  a  twofold  aspect.  In 
all  our  conceptions  we  imply  a  sort  of  dualism  of  power  in 
every  body,  though  we  are  very  apt  to  forget  it  in  our  gen- 
eralizations.* The  hinges  of  gravitation,  for  example,  keep 
worlds  in  their  orbits  by  opposing  a  centrifugal  force  which 
would  otherwise  drive  them  afloat  into  space.  The  smaller 
hinges  of  molecular  cohesion  hold  together  the  infinitely 
smaller  bodies  which  we  call  molecules  of  matter,  in  opposi- 
tion to  a  repulsive  force,  which,  on  the  application  of  a  little 
heat,  may  drive  them  off  into  space,  and  in  volatile  sub- 
stances does  so  drive  them  off  without  heat.  It  is  the  same 
with  liquids ;  their  diffusion  power  is  similar  in  character  to 
the  volatility  of  solids;  while  "  colloids  "  are  volatile,  "crys- 
talloids "  are  comparatively  "fixed."  There  is  a  relation  of 
molecules  to  one  another  which  we  are  compelled  to  repre- 
sent in  conception  as  the  result  of  a  force  of  repulsion  or 
tension.  And  as  some  sensible  image  is  necessary  for  the 
mind  in  order  to  the  clearness  of  a  conception  of  the  invisi- 
ble, physics  assumes  between  the  ponderable  molecules  of  a 
body  certain  ethereal  particles  which  are  in  a  state  of  sta- 

*  Epicurns,  Democritus,  Aristotle,  all  upheld  the  eternity  of  matter; 
the  quotations  from  Lucretius  and  Persius  on  that  subject  are  well  knowu, 
hut  the  following  passage  from  the  Be  Angmentis  Is  not  so  common :  "  All 
things  change,  but  nothing  is  lost.  This  is  an  axiom  in  physics,  and  holds 
in  natural  theology;  for  as  the  sum  of  matter  neither  diminishes  nor  in- 
creases, so  it  is  equally  the  work  of  Omnipotence  to  create  or  to  annihilate." 
Other  passages  of  like  import  occur  in  Bacon's  writings.  And  the  Bra- 
minical  doctrine  is  as  follows  :  "The  ignorant  assert  that  the  universe  iu 
the  beginning  did  not  exist  in  its  author,  and  that  it  was  created  out  of 
nothing.  O  ye,  whose  hearts  are  pure,  how  could  something  come  out  of 
nothing?'' 


128  THE  THEORY 

tionary  oscillation,  the  degree  of  temperature  of  the  body 
being  supposed  to  depend  upon  the  intensity  of  the  active 
force  of  these  imponderable  intermolecular  particles.  If  the 
body  be  suddenly  and  greatly  compressed,  these  motions  are 
communicated  to  the  imponderable  ether  outside  the  body, 
and  tension  force  thus  becomes  free  force  in  manifest  radia- 
tion of  heat.  "  What  is  heat  in  us,"  very  justly  said  Locke, 
"  is  in  the  heated  body  nothing  but  motion."  When  heat  is 
withdrawn  from  matter — that  is,  when  the  tension  force  be- 
comes free,  its  molecules  get  nearer  to  one  another — their 
cohesion  is  greater ;  thus  vapors  become  liquids*  and  liquids 
become  solids. 

It  seems  probable  that  the  necessity  of  regarding  matter 
under  this  twofold  aspect  of  attraction  and  repulsion  is  owing 
to  man's  inability,  as  being  himself  a  part  of  Nature,  to  form 
a  conception  of  Nature  as  a  whole.  He  must  necessarily  re- 
gard things  in  relation  to  himself;  for  as  he  exists  only  in 
relation  to  Nature,  and  as  every  phase  of  consciousness  is  an 
expression  of  this  relation,  it  is  plain  that  one  of  the  elements 
of  the  relation  cannot  free  itself,  and  from  an  independent 
point  of  view  watch  unconcernedly  things  as  they  really  are. 
Thus,  though  we  speak  of  passivity  and  activity,  they  are 
really  not  different  kinds  of  action,  but  different  relations  of 
the  same  kind  of  action.  Whatever  be  the  cause,  and  how- 
ever doubtful  the  philosophical  validity  of  the  distinction, 
we  are  compelled  to  regard  matter  in  this  twofold  relation. 
One  aspect  of  the  relation  we  describe  as  passive,  statical, 
cohesion,  or,  to  use  the  generic  term,  attraction;  the  other 
is  active,  dynamical,  tension,  or,  to  use  the  generic  term,  re- 
pulsion. Attraction  plus  repulsion  of  molecules  constitutes 
our  conception  of  matter ;  and,  in  observation  of  its  modes 
of  energy,  attraction  is  recognized  in  gravitation,  cohesion, 
magnetism,  affinity,  love,  while  repulsion  is  found  in  the  cen- 
trifugal force,  in  heat,  in  electricity,  in  antipathy,  and  hate. 

It  is  in  rising  to  the  department  of  chemical  compounds 
that  attraction  is  found  under  a  new  and  special  phase  as 


OF  VITALITY.  129 

cliemical  affinity.  But,  when  the  chemical  union  of  two  mol- 
ecules into  a  single  one  takes  place,  a  diminution  of  the  ten- 
sion force  surrounding  each  molecule  must  occur,  and,  accord- 
ing to  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  force,  an  equivalent  of 
another  force  must  be  set  free.  This  happens  in  tlie  produc- 
tion of  heat  and  electricity ;  for,  as  Faraday  has  shown, 
chemical  action  cannot  take  place  without  the  development 
of  electricity.  The  amount  of  force  liberated  in  a  simple 
chemical  combination  will  be  the  equivalent  of  the  tension 
force  lost.  When  one  atom  of  carbon  combines  with  one  atom 
of  oxygen,  a  definite  quantity  of  tension  force  surrounding  each 
molecule  disappears,  and  a  definite  quantity  of  heat  is  accord- 
ingly produced.  When  two  molecules  separate  in  chemical  de- 
composition, they  necessarily  make  passive  or  latent  so  much 
active  force ;  so  much  heat  becomes  so  much  tension  force. 
But  furthermore,  in  a  chemical  decomposition  we  have  the 
resolution  of  that  very  intense  and  special  force,  chemical 
aflSnity  itself;  so  that  the  force  set  free  will,  one  would  sup- 
pose, far  exceed  that  which  becomes  latent  as  tension  force 
around  the  molecules.  We  know  not  why  two  molecules 
should  chemically  combine ;  we  accept  as  a  fundamental  law 
of  their  nature  this  high,  special,  and  powerful  form  of  at- 
traction ;  but  we  do  know  that,  when  chemical  decomposition 
takes  place,  a  little  chemical  force  must  be  resolved  into 
a  large  display  of*  inferior  force.  It  is  a  fact  authenticated 
by  Faraday,  that  one  drop  of  water  contains,  and  may  be 
made  to  evolve,  as  much  electricity  as  under  different  modes 
of  display  would  suffice  to  produce  a  lightning-flash.  The 
decomposition  of  matter  is  the  resolution  of  force,  and  in 
such  resolution  one  equivalent  of  chemical  force  will  corre- 
spond to  several  equivalents  of  inferior  force.  Thus  chemical 
force,  though  correlated  with  the  physical  forces,  may  be 
said  to  be  of  a  much  higher  order  than  they  are. 

In  the  still  higher  stage  of  matter  in  a  state  of  vitality, 
we  meet  with  chemical  combination  of  a  much  more  complex 
character  than  occurs  in  inorganic  matter  ;  attraction  appears 


130  THE  THEORY 

under  its  most  special  and  complex  form.  Matter,  which  in 
its  elementary  condition  might  occupy  some  space,  is  so 
blended  or  combined  as  to  occupy  a  minimum  ot  space ;  and 
force,  which,  under  a  lower  mode,  might  suffice  perhaps  to 
illuminate  the  heavens,  is  here  confined  within  the  smaU 
compass  of  an  organic  cell  or  of  a  speck  K)f  protoplasm.  "We 
have  to  do,  however,  with  organic  matter  under  two  forms — 
as  dead  and  as  living  matter,  as  displaying  energy  of  its  own, 
or  as  displaying  no  energy.  Dead  organic  matter  has  ceased 
to  act,  and  it  is  now  acted  upon ;  it  is  at  the  mercy  of  the 
forces  which  surround  it,  and  immediately  begin  to  effect  its 
dissolution.  Heat  hastens  decomposition,  because  in  the 
separation  of  the  constituents  of  organic  matter  into  the 
ultimate  inorganic  products — carbonic  acid,  ammonia,  and 
water — a  certain  amount  of  active  force  must  become  latent 
as  the  tension  force  of  these  molecules ;  and  this  force  the 
heat  supplies.  There  is  also  the  force  of  the  chemical  affinity 
of  the  oxygen  of  the  air  for  the  oxidizable  elements  of  the 
substance ;  and  the  combination  is  necessarily  attended  with 
the  production  of  heat.  The  heating  value  of  organic  matter 
will  accordingly  increase  with  the  quantity  of  oxidizable  ele- 
ments; but  the  matter  is  by  no  means  so  simple  as  it  might 
at  first  sight  appear  to  be.  Suppose  the  atom  of  carbon,  with 
which  an  atom  of  oxygen  combines  was  previously  in  com- 
bination with,  for  example,  an  atom  of  hydrogen ;  and  the 
question  is,  whether  the  amount  of  heat  produced  will  be  the 
same  as  though  the  atom  of  carbon  had  been  free  ?  In  reality 
it  will  not ;  it  must  be  less,  because  in  the  separation  of  the 
carbon  atom  and  the  hydrogen  atom  so  much  active  force 
must  become  tension  force — that  is,  so  much  heat  must  dis- 
appear or  become  latent;  and  that  loss  of  heat  will  neces- 
sarily counterbalance  a  part  of  the  heat  produced,  or  the 
decrease  of  tension  force  which  occurs,  through  the  combi- 
nation of  the  atom  of  carbon  with  the  atom  of  oxygen.  It  is 
this  consideration  which  appears  to  invalidate  some  experi- 
ments made  and  conclusions  come  to  with  regard  to  animal 
heat. 


OF   VITALITY.  131 

But  there  is  another  consideration.  In  this  mere  burning 
or  decomposition  of  organic  matter,  or  that  wliich  represents 
tlie  passive,  statical,  or  attractive  phase  of  vitality,  the  active 
force  which  results  is  due  partly  to  force  from  -without,  and 
not  solely  to  the  liberation  of  force  latent  in  the  matter.  Ex- 
ternal forces  have,  as  it  vt-ere,  been  pulling  it  to  pieces. 
What,  then,  on  the  principle  of  the  conservation  of  force, 
becomes  of  that  intense  chemical  force  which  is  implied  in 
the  organic  nature  of  the  material,  that  power  which  holds 
it  together  as  a  specific  material  diftering  in  properties  from 
all  kinds  of  inorganic  matter  ?  Though  dead,  the  chemical 
composition  of  organic  substance  is  the  same  as  when  alive ; 
and  its  future  destiny  is  entirely  dependent  on  the  circum- 
stances in  which  it  may  be  placed.  In  the  air,  it  is  true,  it 
will  undergo  decomposition  into  inorganic  products  ;  but,  if 
it  be  surrounded  with  the  conditions  of  life,  if  it  be  exposed 
to  the  influence  of  higher  forces,  by  being  given  as  food  to 
some  animal,  it  does  not  go  downward,  but  upward,  and 
somehow  takes  on  life  again.  It  is  plain  what  becomes  of 
the  statical  force  under  the  latter  circumstances.  But,  in  the 
decomposition  of  organic  matter  in  the  air  and  the  correlative 
resolution  of  force,  it  is  not  so  evident  what  becomes  of  all 
the  force  which  must  be  liberated.  That  it  returns  to  general 
Nature  can  admit  of  no  doubt;  but  does  it  all  appear  as  heat? 
A  part  of  it  must  necessarily  do  so,  becoming  latent  as  the 
tension  force  of  the  molecules  of  the  ultimate  products  of  its 
decomposition,  and  the  rest  is  liberated  under  some  form  or 
other,  if  not  entirely  as  heat.  There  is  some  reason  to  believe, 
however,  that  dead  organic  substance  does  not  always  un- 
dergo the  extreme  retrograde  metamorphosis  of  material  and 
of  force  before  being  used  up  again  in  vital  compounds,  even 
by  the  vegetable  kingdom.  It  has  been  shown  that  not  only 
do  pale  plants,  such  as  fungi,  feed  on  organic  matter,  but 
that  soluble  humus  is  regularly  taken  up  by  the  roots  of  al- 
most all  plants.  Prof.  Le  Conte  has  shown  it  to  be  probable 
that  the  decomposition  of  the  organic  matter  supplies  the 


132  THE  THEORY 

force  necessary  for  raising  other  matter  from  a  lower  to  a 
higher  stage.*  The  force  necessary,  for  organization  is  thus 
furnished  bj  the  force  which  results  from  disorganization ; 
death  and  destruction  are  the  conditions  of  life  and  devel- 
opment. 

When  organic  matter  displays  energy — that  is,  when  it 
has  life — its  relations  with  its  surroundings  are  diiferent.  As 
chemical  aflSnity  seems  to  hold  the  place  of  attraction  in  it, 
and  to  correspond  to  gravitation  among  celestial  bodies, 
cohesive  force  among  molecules,  and  magnetic  force  among 
polar  molecules,  so  its  dynamical  or  vital  action  seems  to  cor- 
respond to  the  force  of  repulsion,  to  the  centrifugal  force  of 
heavenly  bodies,  the  tension  force  of  molecules,  and  electrical 
repulsion.  The  display  of  energy  coincides  with  a  molecular 
change  in  the  statical  element.  With  the  function  of  a  gan- 
glionic nerve-cell,  for  example,  a  correlative  molecular  change, 
or  "waste,"  as  it  is  called,  necessarily  takes  place  either  in 
the  nerve-element  itself  or  in  what  is  supplied  to  it  from  the 
blood.  The  substances  which  are  met  with  in  the  so-called 
extractives  of  nerve-tissue  afford  abundant  evidence  of  a  ma- 
terial waste ;  for  as  products  of  the  retrograde  metamorphosis 
are  found  lactic  acid  in  considerable  quantities,  kreatin,  uric 
acid,  probably  also  hypoxanthin,  and,  representing  the  fatty 
acids,  formic  and  acetic  acid.t  And  what  Du  Bois-Eeymond 
proved  to  happen  in  muscle,  Funke  has  observed  to  happen 
also  with  nerve  :  while  the  contents  of  nerve-tubes  are  neutral 
during  rest  in  the  living  state,  they  become  acid  after  death, 
and  also  after  great  activity  during  life.  After  excessive 
mental  exercise,  it  is  well  known  that  phosphates  appear  in 

*  The  Correlation  of  Physical,  Chemical,  and  Vital  Force,  and  the  Con- 
servation of  Force  in  Vital  Phenomena.  By  J.  Le  Conte,  Professor  of  Ge- 
olo^  and  Chemistry  in  South  Carolina  College.  (American  [Journal  of 
Science  and  Arts,  No.  28, 1859.) 

t  It  is  interesting  to  remark  how  the  products  of  chemical  transformation 
resulting  from  nerve-action  agree  with  the  products  of  decomposition  after 
muscular  activity,  and  how  the  results  coincide  with  what,  a  priori,  might 
have  been  expected  from  the  great  vital  activity  of  nerve-structure. 


OF  VITALITY.  133 

the  urine  in  considerable  quantities ;  and  it  is  only  by  sup- 
posing an  idea  to  be  accompanied  by  a  correlative  change  in 
the  nerve-cells  that  we  can  explain  the  bodily  exhaustion 
which  is  produced  by  mental  labor,  and  the  breaking  down 
of  the  brain  under  prolonged  intellectual  efforts.  There  is 
even  at  times  a  sensation  of  something  going  on  in  the  brain ; 
and,  in  insanity,  such  anomalous  feelings  are  sometimes  per- 
sistently complained  of.  But  the  change  or  waste  which 
accompanies  energy  is  restored  by  nutrition  during  rest,  and 
the  conditions  of  future  energy  are  thus  established ;  nutritive 
attraction  steadily  repairing  the  waste  of  centrifugal  function. 
The  cell  thus,  for  a  time  at  least,  preserves  its  individuality  ; 
and  definiteness  of  energy,  with  the  maintenance  of  individ- 
uality, is  what  is  connoted  by  vitality. 

Is  the  energy  displayed  by  living  matter  something  quite 
special?  In  attempting  to  answer  that  question,  two  consid- 
erations should  be  kept  in  view.  In  the  first  place,  an  effect 
need  not  at  all  resemble  in  properties  its  cause  ;  the  qualities 
of  a  chemical  compound  are  quite  different  from  those  of  its 
constituents.  Such  a  complex  compound  as  organic  matter 
really  is  may  be  expected,  therefore,  to  exhibit  peculiar  prop- 
erties in  no  way  resembling  those  of  its  constituent  elements 
or  those  of  simple  compounds.  In  the  second  place,  the  ar- 
rangement or  grouping  of  the  molecules  in  a  substance,  inde- 
pendently of  its  chemical  composition,  may  greatly  alter  its 
properties  :  there  is  a  molecular  as  well  as  a  chemical  consti- 
tution of  matter.  In  that  condition  of  bodies  which  is  de- 
scribed as  Isomerism,  there  are  atoms  alike  in  number,  nature, 
and  relative  proportion,  so  grouped  as  somehow  to  produce 
compounds  having  very  different  chemical  properties.  Again, 
it  has  been  found  that  the  same  matter  may  exist  under  two 
very  different  conditions,  and  with  very  different  properties — 
as  colloidal  and  as  crystalloidal,  in  a  gelatinous  or  in  a  crys- 
talline state.  And  what  is  the  chief  difference?  It  is  that 
the  colloidal  is  a  dynamical  state  of  matter,  the  crystalloidal 
a  statical  state.     The  colloid  exhibits  energy  ;  its  existence  is 


134  THE  THEORY 

a  continued  metastasis ;  and  it  may  be  looked  upon,  says 
Graham,  "  as  the  probable  primary  source  of  the  force  ap- 
pearing in  the  phenomena  of  yitality."  The  distinction  be- 
tween the  two  kinds  of  matter  is,  in  fact,  "  that  subsisting 
between  the  material  of  a  mineral  and  the  material  of  an 
organized  mass."  And  yet  minerals  may  exist  in  the  colloidal 
state  ;  the  hydrated  peroxides  of  the  aluminous  class,  for  ex- 
ample, are  colloids.  Furthermore,  the  mineral  forms  of  silicic 
acid  deposited  from  water,  such  as  flint,  are  found  to  have 
passed  during  the  geological  ages  from  the  colloidal  into  the 
crystalline  condition  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the  so-called 
blood-crystals  of  Funke,  a  soft  and  gelatinous  albuminoid  is 
seen  to  assume  a  crystalline  contour.  "  Can  any  facts,"  asks 
Graham,  "  more  strikingly  illustrate  the  maxim,  that  in  Na- 
ture there  are  no  abrupt  transitions,  and  that  distinctions  of 
class  are  never  absolute  ?  "  * 

The  foregoing  considerations  render  it  evident  that  the 
manifestation  of  organic  energy  by  matter  is  not  a  contrast  to 
the  kind  of  energy  which  is  displayed  by  inorganic  matter, 
and  so  far  justify  the  supposition  that  it  may  be  a  question 
of  chemical  composition  and  intimate  molecular  constitution. 
Vitality  would  not  then  be  a  special  principle,  but  a  result,  and 
would  be  explained  ultimately  by  the  operation  of  the  so-called 
molecular  forces.  Coleridge's  assertion,  that  the  division  of 
substances  into  living  and  dead,  though  psychologically  ne- 
cessary, Avas  of  doubtful  philosophical  validity,  would  receive 
a  support  which  its  author  could  scarce  have  expected  for  it. 

Before  granting  any  conclusion,  it  is  desirable  to  examine 
into  that  which  is  generally  deemed  to  constitute  the  spe- 

*  A  farther  characteristic  of  colloids  is  their  singular  inertness  in  all 
ordinary  chemical  relations,  though  they  have  a  compensating  activity  of 
their  own  in  their  penetrability ;  they  are  permeable  vrhen  in  mass,  as  water 
is,  by  the  more  highly  diffusive  class  of  substances,  but  they  cut  off  entirely 
other  colloidal  substances  that  may  be  in  solution.  It  is  evident  that  our 
conception  of  solid  matter  must  soon  undergo  considerable  modification. 
(On  Liquid  Diffusion  applied  to  Analysis.  By  T.  Graham,  F.  R.  S.  Philo- 
sophical Transactions,  1862.) 


OF   VITALITY.  135 

cialty  of  life.  Now,  it  is  certain,  when  we  consider  the  vast 
range  of  vitality  from  the  simple  life  of  a  molecule  or  cell  to 
the  complex  life  of  man,  that  valid  objections  may  be  made 
to  any  definition  of  life.  If  it  be  v/ide  enough  to  comprise 
all  forms,  it  will  be  too  vague  to  have  any  value ;  if  narroAv 
enough  to  be  exact,  it  will  exclude  the  most  lowly  forms. 
The  problem  is  to  investigate  the  conditions  of  the  manifesta- 
tion of  life.  A  great  fault  in  many  attempted  definitions  has 
been  the  description  of  life  as  a  resistance  or  complete  con- 
trast to  the  rest  of  Nature,  which  was  supposed  to  be  con- 
tinually striving  to  destroy  it.  But  the  elements  of  organic 
matter  arc  not  different  from  those  of  inorganic,  whence  they 
are  derived,  and  to  which  they  return ;  and  the  chemical  and 
mechanical  forces  of  these  elements  cannot  be  suspended  or 
removed  within  the  organism.  What  is  special  is  the  manner 
of  composition  of  the  elements :  there  is  a  concurrence  of 
manifold  substances,  and  they  are  combined  or  grouped  to- 
gether in  a  very  complex  way.  Such  union  or  grouping  is, 
however,  only  a  further  advance  upon,  and  by  no  means  a 
contrast  to,  the  kind  of  combination  which  is  met  with  in  in- 
organic bodies.  Life  is  not  a  contrast  to  non-living  Nature, 
but  a  further  development  of  it.  The  more  knowledge  ad- 
vances, the  more  plainly  is  it  shown  that  there  are  physical 
and  chemical  processes  upon  which  life  depends.  Heat  is 
produced  by  combustion  in  the  organism  as  it  is  in  the  fire  ; 
starch  is  converted  into  sugar  there,  as  it  is  in  the  chemical 
laboratory ;  urea,  which  is  so  constant  a  product  of  the  body's 
chemistry,  can  be  formed  artificially  by  the  chemist;  and 
the  process  of  excitation  in  a  nerve,  on  the  closure  of  a  con- 
stant stream,  appears  to  be  analogous  to  the  process  of  elec- 
trolysis in  which  hydrogen  is  given  off'  at  the  negative  pole.* 
The  peculiarity  of  life  is  the  complexity  of  combination  in  so 
small  a  space,  the  intimate  operation  of  many  simultaneously- 
acting  forces  in  the  microcosm  of  the  organic  cell.     Knowl- 

*  A.  von  Bozold :  Untersuchnnfreu  ilber  die  electrischo  Errcgung  dcr 
Ncrvcn  imd  Muskeln.    Leipzig,  ISGl. 


136  THE  THEORY 

edge  cannot  pass  the  life-boundary,  because  there  are  not 
at  present  any  means  of  follo^Ying  the  intimate  changes  which 
take  place  beyond  it ;  there  is  a  world  there  into  which  the 
senses  of  man  cannot  yet  enter.  But,  as  each  great  advance 
of  science  has  followed  some  invention  by  which  the  opera- 
tion of  the  senses  has  been  extended,  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  the  important  step  toward  a  true  science  of  life 
will  be  made  with  the  discovery  of  a  means  of  tracing  the 
delicate  processes  of  protoplasmic  activity.  Microscopic  phys- 
ics and  microscopic  chemistry,  nay,  physics  and  chemistry 
of  a  delicacy  beyond  the  reach  of  the  powers  of  the  highest 
microscope,  are  needed.  So  that  it  may  well  be  that  this  gen- 
eration and  generations  to  come  will  have  passed  to  their 
everlasting  rest  before  a  discovery  of  the  secret  of  vital  ac- 
tivity is  made. 

Before  dealing  with  that  which  is  considered  to  mark  a 
second  and  great  peculiarity  of  life,  namely,  its  aim  or  plan, 
it  will  be  well  to  illustrate  the  foregoing  remarks  from  the 
phenomena  of  conscious  vitality.  It  is,  in  truth,  with  the  low- 
est form  of  vitality  as  it  is  with  the  lowest  form  of  conscious 
vitality — with  the  human  mind  in  the  earliest  stages  of  its  evo- 
lution. A  self-conservative  impulse  moves  the  most  barbarous 
people  to  regard  the  operation  of  the  external  forces  of  Nature, 
and  to  adopt  rude  means  to  preserve  life  and  to  obtain  comfort ; 
the  savage  avoids  the  current  which  would  drive  his  frail  ca- 
noe on  the  hungry  breakers,  and  shelters  his  hut  from  the  over- 
whelming fury  of  the  storm ;  he  may  be  said  to  war  with  ]^a- 
ture  for  the  maintenance  of  individual  power,  as  the  vital 
force  of  a  cell  may  be  said  to  war  with  the  nature  that  imme- 
diately surrounds  it.  But  it  is  obvious  that  man  only  struggles 
successfully  with  the  physical  forces  by  recognizing  the  laws 
of  their  action,  and  by  accommodating  his  individual  forces  to 
physical  laws ;  it  is  victory  by  obedience.  By  conscious  obedi- 
ence to  the  physical  law,  he  appropriates,  as  it  were,  the  force 
thereof,  in  the  increase  of  his  own  power ;  the  idea  is  devel- 
oped in  his  mind  as  the  correlate  of  the  law  or  idea  in  ISTa- 


OF  VITALITY.  137 

ture ;  in  liis  mental  progress  ISTature  is  undergoing  develop- 
ment through  him.  By  keeping  in  mind  this  analogy  of  the 
mental  force  the  difficulty  will  be  obviated,  which  there  might 
seem  to  be  in  conceiving  the  organic  cell  as  a  result  of  physi- 
cal and  chemical  forces,  and  yet  as  resisting  the  action  of 
these  forces.  Every  act  of  so-called  resistance  on  the  part 
of  the  cell  to  the  natural  forces  is  really  a  phenomenon  indi- 
cating the  development  of  them;  its  life  is  not  a  contrast  to 
non-living  Nature,  but  a  further  complication  of  it.  The  fun- 
damental law  of  life  is  the  same  for  its  conscious  and  uncon- 
scious manifestations ;  it  is  individuation  by  appropriation. 
And,  however  necessary  it  may  seem  to  the  individual,  as  a 
part  of  a  whole  looking  at  the  rest,  to  represent  the  vital  as 
in  constant  antagonism  to  the  physical,  such  a  conception 
does  not  faithfully  express  the  condition  of  the  whole  regard- 
ed as  a  whole.  A  just  conception  of  Nature  as  one  harmoni- 
ous whole  is  plainly  not  antagonistic  to  the  spirit  of  any  in- 
vestigations which  may  tend  to  prove  the  dependence  of  life 
on  physical  and  chemical  processes. 

That  which  is  commonly  said  to  constitute  the  specialty  of 
life  is  the  maintenance  of  a  certain  definite  plan  ;  and  accord- 
ingly Coleridge,  following  Schelling,  defined  life  as  "the 
principle  of  individuation."  Given  the  difi*erent  kinds  of 
force  and  of  matter,  and  how,  it  is  asked,  is  the  pattern  de- 
termined and  worked  out?  As  every  individual  is  in  life 
weaving  out  some  pattern  "on  the  roaring  loom  of  time," 
though  "  what  he  weaves  no  weaver  knows,"  so  the  lowest 
form  of  vitality  manifests  a  definite  energy,  and  is  said  to 
accomplish  a  definite  plan.  A  crystal  would  go  on  increasing 
if  suitable  materials  and  the  conditions  of  its  growth  were 
present,  "  but  it  has  been  provided  that  trees  do  not  grow  up 
into  heaven."  Life  works  according  to  an  aim,  said  Aristotle. 
Admitting  all  this,  we  are  not  therefore  called  upon  to  admit 
a  special  contrast  to  the  rest  of  Nature.  Liebig  compares  the 
living  body  to  a  building  which  is  constructed  after  a  definite, 
preordained  plan;  but  it  is  obvious  that  exactly  in  the  same 


138  THE   THEORY. 

sense  might  the  positive  biologist  say  of  the  chemical  atom, 
that  it  is  constructed  and  displays  energy  according  to  a  pre- 
ordained plan;  or  even  of  the  crystal,  that  it  works  out  a 
certain  pattern,  seeing  that  it  cannot  overstep  the  laws  of 
its  form.  The  plan  is  the  law  of  the  matter,  and  the  law  is  not 
something  outside  the  matter,  but  it  is  inherent  in  it.  Organic 
matter,  like  the  chemical  element,  has  an  activity  given  to  it- 
self which  it  must  display ;  the  law  of  causality  is  true  of  it 
as  of  inorganic  matter ;  and  the  organic  effect,  the  so-called 
accomplishment  of  the  plan,  is  the  necessary  result  of  a  cer- 
tain molecular  constitution  and  certain  intimate  combinations 
which  exist  in  the  organic  molecule  or  cell  or  monad,  or 
whatever  else  we  choose  to  name  the  ultimate  unit  of  life. 

The  direct  denial  of  a  special  vital  force  has  been  the 
natural  reaction  against  that  dogmatism  which  assumed  a  vital 
principle  that  Avas  self-generating,  did  any  thing  it  liked,  and 
was  not  amenable  to  investigation.  That  any  force  should 
be  self-generating  in  inexhaustible  quantity  is  really  an  in- 
conceivable supposition.  If  the  axiom,  that  force,  like  matter, 
is  not  capable  of  annihilation,  be  accepted,  and  we  find,  as 
we  do,  that  organic  bodies  incorporate,  or  somehow  cause  to 
disappear,  inorganic  matter  and  force,  and  thereby  themselves 
increas-e,  it  is  an  unavoidable  conclusion  that  the  organic 
matter  and  force  must  represent  the  converted  inorganic 
matter  and  force.  To  suppose  that  the  vital  force  was  self- 
produced  would  be  to  suppose  a  disturbance  of  the  equilib- 
rium of  Nature,  and  it  might  not  then  be  unreasonable  to 
fear  lest  the  earth,  by  the  increase  of  its  repulsion  force, 
should  break  througli  the  hinges  of  gravitation  and  float  off 
into  space,  or  burst  into  fragments,  as  a  planet  between  Mars 
and  Jupiter  is  supposed  at  one  time  to  have  done.* 

*  Science,  in  its  view  of  life,  seems  to  be  following  the  course  of  develop- 
ment in  Humboldfs  mind.  In  his  earlier  writings  he  defined  vital  force  as 
the  unknown  cause  which  prevents  the  elements  from  following  their  origi- 
nal attractive  forces.  (Aphorism,  ex  doct.  Phys.  Chem.Plant.)  "  Reflection 
and  prolonged  study,"  he  says,  in  his  "Aspects  of  Nature,"  "in  the  depart- 
ments of  physiology  and  chemistry,  liave  deeply  shaken  my  earlier  belief  in 


OF  VITALITY.  139 

TMien,  however,  it  is  said  that  a  minute  i)ortion  of  living 
matter  converts  inorganic  matter  into  its  own  nature,  and 
thus  develops  new  organic  matter  which  has  the  power  of 
doing  likewise,  it  is  evident  that  a  great  and  peculiar  poten- 
tiality is  assumed  in  the  living  molecule.  AVhat  power  is  it 
which  transforms  the  matter  and  force  ?  Some  who  have  ad- 
vocated the  correlation  of  the  vital  force  with  the  physical 
forces  seem  not  to  have  given  due  attention  to  this  question  ; 
they  have  laid  such  great  stress  on  the  external  force  as  to 
have  fallen  into  an  error  almost  as  great  as,  though  the  oppo- 
site of,  that  of  the  advocates  of  a  self-generating  vital  force. 
External  circumstances  are  the  necessary  conditions  of  in- 
vrard  activity,  but  the  inward  fact  is  the  important  condition 
— it  is  the  determining  condition,  and,  so  far  as  we  know 
yet,  it  can  only  he  derived  from  a  like  living  mother  struct- 
ure. Nevertheless,  even  in  that  inherited  potentiality  there 
is  not  a  contrast  to  that  Avhich  happens  in  the  rest  of  Nature. 
When  heat  is  converted  into  electricity,  or  any  force  into 
another,  the  change  is  not  self-determined;  the  determining 
force  lies  in  the  molecules  of  the  matter,  in  the  so-called 
statical  force,  that  which  Aristotle  in  his  division  of  causes 
names  the  material  cause.  And  if  it  be  objected  that  a  little 
life  is  able  to  do  such  a  great  deal,  the  answer  is  that  a  like 
thing  happens  in  fermentation.  When  a  certain  organic  sub- 
stance makes  the  inorganic  matter  in  contact  with  it  become 
organic,  it  may  be  that  it  does  so  by  a  kind  of  infection  or 
fermentation  by  which  the  molecular  relations  of  its  smallest 
particles  are  transferred  to  the  particles  of  the  inorganic  just 
as  in  the  inorganic  world  forces  pass  from  matter  to  matter. 

But  there  are  further  considerations.  Admitting  that  tlie 
vital  transforming  matter  is  at  first  derived  from  vital  struct- 

peculiar  so-called  vital  force."  And  again  :  "  The  difficulty  of  satisfactorily 
referring  the  vital  phenomena  of  organism  to  physical  and  chemical  laws 
depends  chiefly  (and  almost  in  the  same  manner  as  the  prediction  of  mete- 
orological processes  in  the  atmosphere)  on  the  complication  of  the  phenom- 
ena, and  on  the  great  number  of  the  simultaneously-acting  forces,  as  well  as 
the  conditions  of  their  activity." 


140  THE  THEORY 

nre,  it  is  evident  that  tlie  external  force  and  matter  trans- 
formed does  in  turn  become  transforming  force — that  is,  vital. 
And  if  that  takes  place  after  the  vital  process  lias  once  com- 
menced^ is  it,  it  may  be  asked,  extravagant  to  suppose  that  a 
similar  transformation  might  at  some  period  have  commenced 
the  process,  and  may  even  now  be  doing  so  ?  The  fact  that  in 
growth  and  development  life  is  continually  increasing,  from  a 
transformation  of  physical  and  chemical  forces,  is  after  all  in 
favor  of  the  presumption  that  it  may  at  first  have  so  origi- 
nated. And  the  advocate  of  this  view  may  turn  upon  his 
opponent,  and  demand  of  him  how  he,  with  a  due  regard  to 
the  axiom  that  force  is  not  self-generating,  and  to  the  fact 
that  living  matter  does  increase  from  the  size  of  a  little  cell 
to  the  magnitude  of  a  human  body,  accounts  for  the  continual 
production  of  transforming  power?  A  definite  quantity  only 
could  have  been  derived  from  the  mother  structure,  and  that 
must  have  been  exhausted  at  an  early  period  of  growth.  The 
obvious  refage  of  the  vitalist  is  to  the  facts  that  it  is  impossi- 
ble now  to  evolve  life  artificially  out  of  any  combination  of 
pliysical  and  chemical  forces,  and  that  such  a  transformation 
is  never  witnessed  save  under  the  conditions  of  vitality. 

Thus  the  argument  stands.  Meanwhile,  those  who  do 
believe  in  the  origination  of  life  from  non-living  matter  hope 
to  succeed  in  artificially  producing  the  upward  transforma- 
tion, and  may  say  reasonably  enough  that  it  is  not  to  be  ex- 
pected that  such  transformation  should  now  take  place  as  a 
regular  process  in  Nature,  except  under  conditions  of  vitality. 
Such  a  supposition  is  as  unnecessary  as  it  would  be  to  assume 
that  the  savage  must  continue  to  rub  together  his  sticks,  after 
he  has  obtained  the  spark,  in  order  to  make  the  fire  burn. 
What  only  is  necessary  is  that  the  spark  of  fire,  or  the  spark 
of  life,  once  evolved,  should  be  placed  under  suitable  condi- 
tions, and  it  will  then  go  on  increasing.  The  minutest  portion 
of  living  matter  really  now  contains  implicitly,  as  it  were  in  a 
microcosm,  the  complexity  of  chemical  and  physical  combina- 
tions and  the  conditions  which  were  necessary  for  the  first 


OF  VITALITY.  141 

production  of  life  in  the  macrocosm,  and  it  supplies  these  as 
the  conditions  of  further  vital  transformations.  In  fact,  Na- 
ture, having  accomplished  a  result,  does  not  need  on  each  fu- 
ture occasion  to  go  through  the  preliminary  steps  by  which 
the  result  was  first  arrived  at.  And  in  this  relation  it  is  very 
interesting  to  observe  how  much  use  is  made  of  the  force 
supjdied  by  the  destruction  of  certain  organic  matter  in  rais- 
ing other  matter  to  a  higher  stage.  It  is  supposed,  for  ex- 
ample, that  urea  is  partly  produced  by  the  oxidation  of  an 
excess  of  so-called  albuminous  matters  in  the  blood,  without 
these  having  entered  into  the  formation  of  tissue ;  and  the 
force  thus  supplied  in  the  retrograde  metamorphosis  will  be 
available,  and  probably  is  used,  for  the  exaltation  of  other 
elements. 

It  needs  but  little  consideration  to  see  that  the  living  cell 
cannot  supply  all  the  force  which  is  used  in  increasing  and 
advancing  life — in  the  multiplication  and  transformation  of 
cells;  heat  and  other  external  conditions  are  necessary,  as 
being,  so  to  speak,  material  for  transformation.  It  is  a  mis- 
take, however,  to  say,  as  some  have  said,  that  heat  and  ex- 
ternal conditions  determine  the  rate  of  growth.  The  rate  of 
germination,  for  example,  certainly  varies  according  to  exter- 
nal conditions,  but  the  limits  of  variation  are  fixed  by  the 
inherent  properties  of  the  structure.  The  seeds  of  a  begonia 
taken  from  the  same  pod  will,  as  Mr.  Paget  has  pointed  out, 
germinate,  some  in  a  day,  some  at  the  end  of-  a  year,  and 
some  at  various  intermediate  times,  even  when  they  are  all 
placed  under  the  same  external  conditions.  And  the  same 
author  has  pointed  out  other  indications  of  self-dependent 
time-rates  in  the  lower  organisms.  There  are,  in  fact,  inter- 
nal as  w^ell  as  external  conditions  of  growth,  and  the  former 
are  the  more  important,  for  they  are  really  the  determining 
conditions.  It  is  with  the  organic  cell  and  its  conditions  as 
it  is  with  the  individual  and  his  circumstances ;  the  latter  may 
greatly  modify  character,  and  are  necessary  for  development, 
but  the  essential  fact,  which  determines  the  limit  of  the  modi- 


142  THE  THEORY 

fjing  power  of  circumstances,  is  the  nature  implanted  in  the 
individual. 

It  is  easy  to  perceive  how  impossible  it  is,  in  the  present 
state  of  science,  to  come  to  any  positive  conclusion  with  re- 
gard to  the  nature  of  the  vital  force. .  All  that  can  be  said  is, 
that  advancing  knowledge  more  and  more  clearly  proves  the 
dependence  of  life  on  physical  and  chemical  processes,  and 
tends  to  show  that  vital  action  does  not  contrast  with  the 
kind  of  action  exhibited  by  inorganic  Nature.  Living  matter 
displays,  in  fact,  the  energy  of  colloidal  and  the  plan  of  crys- 
talloidal  matter.  When  vital  force  undergoes  resolution  into 
inferior  force,  simultaneously  with  the  decomposition  of  sub- 
stance, it  is  into  heat,  chemical  force,  and  electricity,  that  we 
find  it,  as  it  were,  unfolded;  it  is  a  natural  conjecture,  there- 
fore, that  the  conditions  of  the  artificial  production  of  vitality 
must  be  a  high  and  complex  chemistry  to  represent  the  stat- 
ical correlative,  and  some  mode  of  repulsion  force,  as  heat 
or  electricity,  or  both,  to  represent  the  dj-namical  correla- 
tive. It  is  certainly  extremely  unphilosophical  in  the  present 
condition  of  knowledge  to  refuse  to  accept  vitality  as  a 
si^ecial  mode  of  manifestation  of  force ;  the  special  character 
of  its  phenomena  demand  that,  whatever  its  real  nature  may 
be,  vital  force  should  for  the  present  be  received  as  a  distinct 
force  on  the  same  terms  as  chemical  force  or  electrical  force. 
The  facts  of  observation,  as  well  as  a  priori  considerations, 
unquestionably  demand  also  that  it  should  be  regarded  as 
subject  to  the  laws  of  the  correlation  and  conservation  of 
force. 

As,  then,  vital  force  is  plainly  by  far  the  highest  force  in 
dignity,  a  small  quantity  of  it  will  correspond  in  value  to  a 
much  greater  quantity  of  an  inferior  force ;  one  equivalent 
of  vital  force,  in  fact,  will  correspond  to  many  equivalents 
of  the  lower  forces.  An  immense  amount  of  force  is  re- 
quired to  raise  matter  from  its  elementary  state  to  that  con- 
dition in  which  it  is  described  as  organic ;  and  the  upward 
transformation  evidently  only  takes  place  through  the  inter- 


OF  VITALITY.  143 

mediate  action  of  cliemical  force.  But  vital  force  surpasses 
chemical  force  apparently  in  as  great  a  degree  as  chemical 
force  surpasses  physical  force.  How  great,  then,  must  be  its 
mechanical  equivalent!  Who  can  measure  the  power  of  a 
great  idea?  Armies  fight  in  vain  against  it,  and  nations 
yield  to  its  sway.  What  wonder  that  life  was  the  last  and 
highest  development  of  Nature,  and  that  it  was  produced 
only  after  the  inferior  forces  had  been  long  in  existence ! 
"What  ground,  furthermore,  it  might  be  asked,  have  we  for 
supposing  that  it  is  destined  to  be  the  last  development  of 
force  ?  Is  it  not  possible  that  a  still  higher  manifestation  of 
force  than  that  which  we  call  vital  may  ultimately  result 
from  the  complexity  of  forces  and  conditions  which  are  now 
present  on  earth?  The  hypothesis  of  Laplace  was,  that  in 
primeval  times  a  large  quantity  of  nebulous  matter  was 
spread  through  space.  This  nebulous  matter  was  through 
gravitation  aggregated  into  solid  masses.  Immense  heat  must 
have  been  thus  produced,  and  this  heat  might  then  produce 
light,  and  develop  electricity  as  it  does  now  when  acting  on 
the  thermo-electric  plates.  Electricity  might  appear  again 
as  heat  or  as  light,  or  as  chemical  force,  as  it  does  in  the  de- 
composing cell  of  a  voltaic  battery.  The  correlation  of  these 
forces  we  are  able  to  trace  now,  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  con- 
ceive how  they  mutually  excited  and  affected  one  another  in 
the  primeval  times  when  the  earth  was,  as  vre  are  told, 
without  form  and  void.  But  there  was  a  time  when  no  life 
existed  on  the  earth.  So  that  as  we  can  now  obtain  one 
force  from  another  up  to  the  point  where  life  begins,  when 
we  are  at  fault,  similarly  considerable  time  elapsed  in  I^ature 
before  vital  force  followed  on  the  physical  and  chemical 
forces.  Science  may,  then,  claim  that  in  its  difficulty  and 
delay  it  only  reflects  a  corresponding  difficulty  in  ]^ature. 

But  there  are  other  important  considerations  with  regard 
to  vitality.  It  does  not  follow,  because  we  recognize  a  special 
vital  manifestation,  that  there  is  but  one  kind  thereof;  it  is  in 
reality  necessary  to  admit  different  degrees,  if  not  different 


144  THE  THEORY 

kinds,  of  vitality.  As  with  organic  matter  so  with  organic 
force,  we  trace  an  advance  from  the  most  simple  and  general 
to  the  most  complex  and  special.  The  tissue  of  the  simple 
protozoon  is  uniform  and  exhibits  no  trace  of  structure ;  its 
active  relations  are  equally  simple.  In  the  ascending  scale 
of  life  continuous  differentiation  of  tissue  corresponds  with 
increasing  specialty  and  complexity  of  relation  with  the  ex- 
ternal, until  in  man  we  observe  the  highest  example  of  a 
unity  of  organism  proceeding  from  manifold  varieties  of  ele- 
ments, and  of  unity  of  action  from  the  coordination  of  many 
forces.  And  as  it  is  with  the  animal  kingdom,  so  it  is  with  the 
elementary  structures  which  form  it ;  there  is  a  scale  of  dignity, 
a  hierarchy  of  tissues ;  the  lowest  appear  first,  and  are  neces- 
sary steps  for  the  evolution  of  the  highest.  All  the  force  of 
ISTature  could  not  develop  a  nerve-cell  directly  out  of  inor- 
ganic matter;  and  the  cell  of  the  Protococcus  nivaUs,  or  the 
molecules  of  the  Amoeba,  could  not,  under  any  possible  cir- 
cumstances, energize  as  nerve-force.  Between  the  vitality 
of  thought  and  the  vitality  of  the  fungus  there  is  scarcely  a 
comparison  possible ;  the  former  is  dependent  upon  the  widest 
and  most  complex,  and  at  the  same  time  the  most  intense  and 
special  relations  with  external  Nature,  while  the  latter  exhibits 
only  a  few  general  and  comparatively  simple  relations  there- 
with. Between  the  relations  of  a  nerve-cell  and  an  epidermic 
cell  with  their  surroundings,  there  is  as  much  difference  as 
there  is  between  the  relations  of  a  Ehizopod  and  those  of  a 
Cephalopod  with  external  Nature.  And  the  relations  of  a 
nerve-cell  with  its  surroundings  are,  it  must  be  remembered, 
dependent  on  the  maintenance  of  the  relations  of  all  the  in- 
ferior elements  of  the  body  which  intervene  in  the  descending 
scale  between  it  and  the  inorganic. 

Whatever,  then,  may  be  the  fact  in  animal  development, 
it  is  certain  that  transformation  of  species  takes  place  in  the 
structural  elements.  "When  a  tissue  takes  material  from  the 
blood,  it  does  not  merely  aggregate,  but  it  assimilates  it — 
that  is,  it  makes  it  of  tlie  same  Hnd  with  itself.     In  develop- 


OF  VITALITY.  145 

iiicnt,  a  higher  tissue  constantly  proceeds  from  a  lower  one, 
and  demands  the  lower  one  as  a  necessary  antecedent  to  its 
production ;  it  has  thus,  as  external  conditions,  not  only 
those  which  are  general,  but  the  intimate  and  special  influ- 
ences of  the  tissue  which  is  before  it  in  the  order  of  existence. 
In  the  latter  are  supplied  the  special  and  essential  conditions 
for  the  exaltation  and  transpeciation  of  force  and  material. 
But  all  exaltation  of  force  is,  as  it  were,  a  concentration  of 
it ;  one  equivalent  of  the  higher  force  corresponds  to  many 
equivalents  of  the  inferior  force  which  has  been  transformed. 
Hence  it  is  that  the  power  of  reproducing  tissues  or  parts  in 
animals  is  diminished  much  more  by  development  than  by 
growth ;  and  the  law  which  describes  the  reparative  power 
in  each  species  of  animal  as  being  in  an  inverse  ratio  to  its 
position  in  the  scale  of  life,  though  not  strictly  proved,  is  yet 
true  as  a  general  proposition. 

If,  now,  the  degree  of  dignity  of  an  element  represents  a 
corresponding  degree  of  vitality,  it  is  obviously  right  to  speak 
of  the  life  of  the  blood,  without  any  design  of  placing  its  life 
on  the  same  level  with  that  of  nerve.  In  the  decomposition 
of  material  and  the  correlative  resolution  of  force  which  take 
place  when  the  blood-cell  returns  to  the  inorganic  state,  there 
will  be  much  less  force  liberated  than  when  a  nerve-cell  un- 
dergoes the  retrograde  metamorphosis.  As  a  great  expendi- 
ture of  force  is  needed  to  raise  matter  from  the  inorganic  to 
the  organic  state,  so  a  further  greater  expenditure  is  required 
to  raise  matter  from  a  low  organic  to  its  highest  organic  con- 
dition. The  nerve-cell  is,  so  to  say,  the  highest  parasite 
which  thus  sucks  up  the  life  of  the  blood ;  and,  if  the  process 
of  its  decomposition  were  accurately  observed,  it  would  be 
found  that  all  the  force  w^hich  had  been  consumed  by  it  in  its 
upward  transformation  was  given  back  to  Nature  in  its  down- 
ward metamorphosis. 

The  retrograde  metamorphosis  of  organic  elements  is  con- 
stantly taking  place  as  a  part  of  the  history  of  life.  In  the 
function  of  nerve-cell,  a  nerve-force  is  liberated  which  excites 


146  THE  THEORY 

muscular  force,  and  is  ultimately  given  back  to  external  liga- 
ture as  motion  ;  the  coincident  "  waste  "  of  substance  is  re- 
ceived into  the  blood,  and  ultimately  also  passes  back  to 
I^ature.  It  is  probable,  however,  that  this  "  waste  "  does 
not  pass  always  directly  out  of  the  body,  but  that  it  may  be 
first  used  as  the  nutriment  of  some  lower  element.  Thus,  as 
there  seemed  reason  to  believe  that,  in  the  economy  of  Na- 
ture, animal  matter  did  not  undergo  the  extreme  retrograde 
metamorphosis  into  inorganic  matter  before  being  used  as  food 
by  vegetables,  so  in  the  animal  body  the  higher  elements  do  not 
appear  at  once  to  undergo  the  extreme  retrograde  metamor- 
phosis, but  are  first  used  as  the  nutriment  of  lower  organic 
element.  How  admirably  does  Nature  thus  economize  in  the 
body!  Just  as  on  a  larger  scale  the  carbonic  acid  exhaled 
by  animals  is  taken  up  by  vegetables,  and  a  poison  thus  re- 
moved from  the  atmosphere  in  which  the  animal  lives,  so  by 
one  organic  element  of  the  body  the  blood  is  purified  from 
the  waste  matter  of  a  higher  element  which  would  be  poison- 
ous to  it. 

The  parts  impaired  by  activity,  as  all  parts  mast  be,  are 
repaired  during  rest  in  a  condition  of  health.  And  it  is 
very  interesting  to  observe,  as  Mr.  Paget  has  pointed  out, 
that  the  organic  processes  of  repair  in  each  tissue  are  ad- 
justed to  a  certain  time-rate,  which  is  variable  according  to, 
but  is  not  determined  by,  external  conditions.  The  time-rate 
is  determined  by  the  implanted  properties,  and  "for  each 
unit  of  nutrition  might  be  reckoned  a  unit  of  time."  The 
periodicities  of  organic  life  appear  to  be  prominent  instances 
of  the  law ;  and  the  rhythmic  motions  of  the  heart,  or  the 
motions  of  cilia,  are,  Mr.  Paget  supposes,  due  "to  a  method 
of  nutrition  in  which  the  acting  parts  are,  at  certain  peri- 
ods, raised  with  time-regulated  progress  to  a  state  of  instabil- 
ity of  composition  from  which  they  then  decline,  and  in  their 
decline  may  change  their  shape  and  move  with  a  definite  velo- 
city, or  (as  nervous  centres)  may  discharge  nerve-force."  *    In 

*  On  the  Chronometry  of  Life.    By  J.  Pa^et,  F.  R.  S.    (Croonlan  Lec- 
ture bcforo  the  Royal  Society,  1857.) 


OF   VITALITY.  147 

this  recognition  of  the  chronomctry  of  organic  processes, 
there  is  iinquestionahly  great  promise  for  tlic  future ;  for  it 
is  plain  that  the  observance  of  time  in  tlio  motions  of  organic 
molecules  is  as  certain  and  universal,  if  not  as  exact,  as  that 
in  the  motions  of  heavenly  bodies.  Each  organic  process 
has  its  definite  time-rate ;  and  each  cell  has  its  appointed  pe- 
riod of  life  different  for  different  kinds  of  cells.  The  exer- 
cise of  its  energy  is  the  accomplishment  of  the  life-task  of  the 
gland-cell  of  the  stomach,  and  its  existence  ends  therewith — it 
discharges  its  duty  with  its  life  ;  but  it  is  not  so  with  other 
cells.  It  is  not  known,  for  example,  how  soon  the  blood-cell  and 
other  cells  die.  The  blood-cell  may  be  ephemeral,  and  after 
the  manufacture  of  its  material  straightway  perish,  supplying 
in  the  products  of  its  decomposition  material  for  the  coloring 
matters  of  the  bile;  or  it  may  accomplish  its  function  more 
than  once,  and  live  therefore  for  some  time.  Certain  facts 
do,  indeed,  point  to  a  short  duration,  as,  for  example,  the  de- 
struction of  the  nucleus  in  the  blood-cell,  the  analogy  of  the 
cells  of  the  stomach  and  milk-glands,  and  of  the  sebaceous 
and  spermatic  cells,  and  the  great  production  of  blood-cells ; 
but  nothing  positive  is  known,  and  the  subject  is  one  which 
awaits,  and  ought  to  receive,  careful  attention. 

Such,  then,  is  the  general  process  of  life  physiologically 
regarded.  But  there  is  nothing  special  in  disease.  Although 
the  destructive  cancerous  mass  seems  at  first  sight  to  admit 
of  no  sort  of  comparison  with  the  beneficial  formation  of  a 
developing  organ,  yet  the  production  is  governed  by  laws  of 
organic  growth  and  activity.  No  new  forces  nor  new  laws 
appear  in  the  organism  under  the  circumstances  which  are  de- 
scribed as  disease.  "  'Tis  as  natural  to  die  as  to  be  born,''  says 
Sir  T.  Browne ;  and,  if  we  choose  to  ac  3ept  the  doctrine  of  final 
cause,  we  must  acknowledge  that  the  disease  w^hich  leads  to 
death  is  as  natural,  as  much  in  the  purpose  of  Nature,  as  the 
physiological  processes  which  constitute  health.  An  indi- 
vidual exists  in  certain  relations  with  the  external,  and  the 
harmonv  which  results  from  the  maintenance  of  these  rela- 


148  THE  THEORY 

tions  is  health,  while  a  disturbance  of  them,  whether  from  a 
cause  in  the  organism  or  in  the  external  circumstances,  or 
partly  in  one  and  partly  in  the  other,  is  discord  or  disease. 
The  phenomena  of  morbid  action  may  therefore,  when  prop- 
erly regarded,  be  serviceable  as  experiments  illustrating  the 
character  and  relations  of  vital  action. 

As  each  cell  has  its  appointed  period  of  life,  and  each 
species  of  cell  its  natural  degree  of  life,  and  as  there  are 
many  cells  and  many  kinds  of  cells  in  the  human  body,  it  is 
evident  that  disease  will  be  more  easily  initiated  in  it  than  in 
an  organism  with  less  differentiation  of  tissue,  and  less  com- 
plexity of  structure.  For  the  life  of  the  organism  is  the  sum 
of  the  life  of  its  individual  parts,  and  superiority  of  vitality 
signifies  more  numerous,  special,  and  complex  relations  with 
the  external.  In  the  lowest  organisms,  where  there  is  a 
similarity  of  structure,  one  part  is  independent  of  another, 
and  dependent  only  on  the  maintenance  of  certain  general 
and  simple  relations  with  the  external ;  there  is,  therefore, 
comparatively  little  liability  to  disturbance.*  "When  the  parts 
are,  however,  unlike,  and  there  is  a  definite  subordination  of 
them,  so  that  the  well-being  of  the  highest  structure  is  de- 
pendent on  the  well-being  of  all  the  structures  which  inter- 
vene in  the  descending  scale  between  it  and  inorganic  Nature, 
there  is  plainly  abundant  room  for  disturbance.  As  in  the 
state,  80  in  the  organism,  the  vitality  of  the  government  flows 
from,  and  rests  upon,  the  well-being  of  individuals. 

"When,  from  some  of  the  many  disturbing  causes  which 
initiate  disease,  a  particular  elementary  constituent  of  the 
body  is  prevented  from  rising  to  the  dignity  of  its  specific 
constitution  and  energy,  there  will,  if  the  disturbing  cause 

*  Goethe,  after  saying  that  every  thing  living  is  a  collection  of  living, 
self-dependent  beings,  adds:  "Je  unvolkommner  das  GeschOpf  ist,  depto 
mehr  sind  diese  Theile  einander  gleich  oder  ahnlich,  und  desto  mehr  gleichen 
sie  dem  Ganzen.  Je  volkommner  das  GeschOpf  wird,  desto  nnShnlicher 
werden  die  Theile  einander.  Je  ahnlicher  die  Theile  einander  sind,  desto 
weniger  sind  sie  einander  suhordinirt.  Die  Subordination  der  Theile  deutct 
aaf  ein  volkoaunncros  GeschOpf." 


OF   VITALITY.  149 

has  not  been  so  serious  as  to  destroy  the  life  of  the  part,  be  a 
production  of  an  element  of  a  lower  kind  with  a  lower  en- 
ergy ;  and  that  is  a  diseased  product.  It  is  as  if  the  substance 
of  a  polype  were  produced  among  the  higher  physiological 
elements  of  the  human  body,  and  went  on  increasing  there 
without  regard  to  relations  with  surrounding  elements  of 
tissue.  There  may  be  a  production  of  foreign  substance  in 
larger  quantity  than  that  which  should  rightly  be  formed  of 
the  natural  tissue,  and  a  greater  display  of  force,  but  both 
structure  and  energy  are  of  a  lower  order.  "What  is  gained 
in  quantity  is  lost  in  quality,  and  the  vitality  is  intrinsically 
less. 

Inflammation  in  a  part  is  really  the  result  of  a  degenera- 
tion of  its  vitality.  "When  a  wound  heals  by  the  "  first  inten- 
tion," there  is  direct  adhesion  of  its  surfaces,  and  no  inflam- 
mation, for  the  natural  vitality  of  the  part  is  maintained,  and 
effects  the  repair.  When  slight  inflammation  occurs,  the  vi- 
tality of  the  part  has  undergone  a  certain  dj.'ceneration,  and 
material  of  an  inferior  order  to  the  proper  element  of  the  part 
is  produced ;  this  substiCnce  binds  the  surfaces  together,  and 
it  may  in  process  of  time,  on  the  complete  subsidence  of  in- 
flammation, and  under  the  favorable  conditions  of  surround- 
ing healthy  tissue  life,  even  rise  to  the  condition  of  the  proper 
structure.  But  the  lymph  does  not  appear  to  be  thrown  out 
with  any  special  beneficial  design ;  it  is  the  simple  result  of 
a  deterioration  of  energy,  is  only  a  less  degree  of  a  positive 
evil.  When  greater  inflammation  takes  place,  or  when  the 
natural  vitality  of  the  part  is  feeble,  there  is  a  greater  degen- 
eration, and  material  of  a  still  lower  kind,  wbich  is  not  even 
organizable  under  any  circumstances,  is  produced.  Pus  is 
poured  out,  and  ceases  to  appear  with  the  restoration  of  the 
proper  vitality  of  the  tissue.  If  the  inflammation  is  still 
greater,  the  degeneration  passes  into  actual  destruction  of 
life,  and  mortification  ensues.  "When  John  Hunter,  therefore, 
speaks,  as  he  does,  of  Nature  calling  up  the  vital  powers  to 
produce  suppuration,  his  words  convey  a  false  notion  of  what 


150  THE  THEORY 

really  happens.  The  injury  has  so  damaged  the  parts  that 
the  vital  action  cannot  rise  to  its  specific  elevation ;  an  in- 
ferior kind  of  action  is  alone  possible,  which  is  really  disease, 
and  only  so  far  beneficial  as  it  proves  that  the  life  of  the  part 
has  not  been  killed  outright.  As  might  be  expected,  there- 
fore, it  is  in  exhausting  diseases  that  inflammation  most  com- 
monly and  easily  occurs.  How  incorrect,  then,  is  it  to  speak 
of  inflammation  as  if  it  were  a  process  specially  provided  for 
restoring  the  healthy  life  of  parts  !  When  adhesive  inflamma- 
tion is  said  to  limit  the  suppuration  of  an  abscess,  its  occur- 
rence is  a  result  of  diminishing  mischief,  and  testifies  to  a  less 
serious  degeneration  of  vital  force.  How  hard  it  is  not  to  be 
blind  when  theories  or  wishes  lead  us !  "When  adhesive  in- 
flammation fixes  a  piece  of  strangulated  gut  to  the  side  of  the 
belly,  so  as  happily  to  prevent  the  passage  of  fecal  matter 
into  the  peritoneal  cavity,  it  is  sometimes  said  to  be  a  wise 
and  kindly  provision  of  IsTature.  What,  then,  shall  be  said 
of  inflammation  when  it  glues  the  gut  to  a  hernial  cavity,  or 
manufactures  a  fibrous  band  which  strangles  the  gut  ?  Is  this 
also  a  wise  and  beneficial  design  ? 

That  which  is  true  of  the  material  products  of  inflamma- 
tion is  necessarily  true  of  its  force ;  the  heat,  and  pain,  and 
rigors,  the  forces  as  well  as  the  material,  testify  to  a  degenera- 
tion of  vital  force.  The  sort  of  stormy  rage  and  demonstra- 
tive activity  which  characterize  inflammation,  though  unques- 
tionably an  exhibition  of  force,  are  not  really  an  increased 
display  of  the  proper  vital  force.  Tlie  latter  has  undergone 
a  transformation  from  the  quiet,  self-contained  activity  of 
development  into  the  unrestrained  dissipation  of  a  lower  ac- 
tivity ;  and,  as  regards  the  latter,  it  might  be  said  that  sev- 
eral monads  of  its  matter,  or  volumes  of  its  force,  are  equiva- 
lent only  to  one  monad  of  matter  or  one  volume  of  force  of 
the  former.  Rigors,  as  the  involuntary  action  of  voluntary 
muscle,  are  a  degradation  of  action  witnessing  to  a  molecular 
deterioration  of  vital  conditions.  Heat  is  a  physical  force 
which  mnst  have  resulted  from  the  retrograde  metamorphosis 


OF  VITALITY.  151 

of  vital  force.  The  existence  of  pain,  where  rightly  there 
should  bo  no  sensation,  testifies  to  a  molecular  deterioration 
of  statical  element  and  a  correlative  exhibition  offeree.  The 
increased  action  of  inflammation  in  a  part  is,  therefore,  di- 
minished vital  action.  Perhaps  it  might  once  for  all  be 
stated,  as  a  law  of  vital  action,  that  the  dignity  of  the  force 
is  in  an  inverse  ratio  to  its  volumetrical  display.  It  is  indeed 
with  organic  action  as  it  is  with  mental  action.  The  emo- 
tional man  displays  considerable  force,  and  often  produces 
great  effects  in  the  way  of  destruction,  but  his  power  is  vast- 
ly inferior  to  that  of  the  man  who  has  developed  cmotiona. 
force  into  the  higher  form  of  will-force,  who  has  coordinated 
the  passions  into  the  calm,  self-contained  activity  of  definite 
productive  aim.  Surely  creation  always  testifies  to  a  much 
higher  energy  than  destruction. 

The  foregoing  considerations  unavoidably  flow  from  a 
conception  of  vitality  as  correlate  with  other  natural  forces, 
and  as  subject  to  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  force.  They 
obtain  additional  weight,  however,  from  being  in  some  ac- 
cordance with  the  important  generalizations  which  one  of 
the  most  philosophical  physiologists  of  the  present  time  has 
made  with  regard  to  morbid  products.  Yirchow  has,  as  is 
well  known,  referred  all  morbid  structures  to  physiological 
types,  and  maintains  that  there  is  no  new  structure  produced 
in  the  organism  by  disease.  The  cancer-cell,  the  pus-cell, 
and  all  other  disease-produced  cells,  have  their  patterns  in 
the  cells  of  healthy  structure.  The  cells  of  tubercle  corre- 
spond with  the  corpuscles  of  the  lymphatic  glands ;  pus  and 
colorless  blood-corpuscles  cannot  be  distinguished  except  by 
looking  at  the  place  whence  they  come ;  the  cells  of  cancer 
in  bone  "  are  the  immediate  descendants  of  the  cells  in  bone ;  " 
and  certain  colloid  tumors  have  the  structure  of  the  umbilical 
cord.  ""Where  a  new  formation  takes  place,  certain  histolo- 
gical elements  of  the  body  must  generally  also  cease  to  exist ;  " 
and  every  kind  of  new  formation  is  really,  therefore,  destruc- 
tive, and  destroys  something  of  what  previously  existed.    The 


152  THE  THEORY 

connective  tissue,  with  its  equivalents,  he  describes  as  the 
common  stock  of  germs  of  the  body;  from  them  morbid 
structures  proceed  by  continuous  development.  "  Heterolo- 
gous tissues  have  physiological  types ;  and  there  is  no  other 
kind  of  heterology  in  morbid  structures  than  the  abnormal 
manner  in  -which  they  arise  as  to  place  (heterotopia),  timo 
(heterochronia),  and  quantity  (heterometria)."  * 

The  conclusions  with  regard  to  vital  force,  which  a  con- 
sistent conception  of  it  as  a  natural  force  seems  to  necessi- 
tate, will  find  extensive  application  in  the  various  phenomena 
of  disease.  We  have  seen  that  if  the  resolution  of  the  vital- 
ity of  a  single  nerve-cell  into  a  vitality  of  a  lower  kind  be 
supposed — into  that,  for  example,  of  polype  substance — it 
would  necessarily  sufiice  for  the  production  of  a  whole 
polype,  or  perhaps  of  a  multitude  of  polypes.  In  other 
words,  one  nervous  unit,  monad,  or  molecule,  is  the  vital 
equivalent  of  many  units,  monads,  or  molecules  of  polype 
substance.  How  idle  it  is,  then,  to  dispute,  as  some  have 
done,  as  to  whether  epilepsy  is  increased  vital  action  or 
diminished  vital  action,  when  there  exists  no  clear  conception 
of  what  is  meant  by  the  words  !  l^o  one  can  deny  that  there 
is  great  display  of  force  in  the  convulsions  of  epilepsy,  but  is 
it  increased  vital  force  ?  Is  a  man  in  convulsions  a  strong 
man  ?  for  that  is  the  real  question.  Does  convulsion  in  a 
paralyzed  limb  indicate  increased  vital  action  of  it  ?  When 
tetanus  of  a  muscle  is  produced,  as  Weber  showed  it  might 
be,  by  putting  a  loop  of  thread  round  its  nerve  and  slowly 
and  gradually  tightening  it,  does  the  violent  action  of  the 
muscle  testify  to  increased  vitality  ?  If  it  really  does,  then 
the  mechanical  tetanomotor  of  Heidenhain  might,  properly 
used,  suflSce  for  the  cure  of  every  paralysis,  and  eflfect  a  com- 
plete renewal  of  life. 

In  speaking  of  vital  action,  we  may  either  consider  the 
whole  organism  as  individual,  or  we  may  consider  the  cell  or 
organic  monad  as  the  individual.  If  we  regard  the  organism 
*  Cellular  Pnthology. 


OF  VITALITY.  153 

D3  individiuil,  then  when  general  convulsions  take  place  in  it — 
that  is,  violent  and  aimless  movements  completely  withdrawn 
from  the  control  of  the  will,  which  should  rightly  coordinate 
them  into  definite  action — it  is  simply  to  use  words  without 
meaning  to  say  that  the  vital  action  of  the  individual  is  in- 
creased. There  is  not,  then,  individual  action ;  and  the  defi- 
nition of  vitality  is  not  applicable  to  the  organism  as  a  whole. 
The  highest  manifestation  of  individuality  is  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  man,  the  so-called  unity  of  the  ego ;  but,  when  the 
coordination  of  forces  for  a  definite  end  is  replaced  by  the 
convulsions  of  epilepsy,  there  is  neither  subjective  nor  ob- 
jective unity  of  action.  Instead  of  that  quiet  will-force  which 
expresses  conscious  unity,  or  that  unconscious  unity  of  or- 
ganic action  which  is  manifest  in  sleep,  there  is  the  violent 
and  incoherent  exhibition  of  inferior  force.  Increased  action 
is  the  result  of  a  degeneration  of  the  proper  vital  action.  "  A 
man  in  convulsions  is  not  strong,  though  six  men  cannot  hold 
him." 

Like  considerations  apply  when  the  single  cell  is  regarded 
as  individual.  In  virtue  of  a  certain  chemical  constitution 
and  a  certain  definite  arrangement  of  molecules,  a  cell  ex- 
hibits energy  as  nerve-force.  That  special  mode  of  energy  is 
the  definite  result  of  a  certain  coordination  of  chemical  com- 
binations and  molecular  relations ;  and  these  are  connoted  in 
the  individuality  of  the  cell.  "VYhen,  however,  in  place  of 
the  definite  process  of  statical  attraction  (nutrition)  and  dy- 
namical repulsion  (energy),  there  takes  place  a  largo  demon- 
strative display  of  force — as  general  epileptic  convulsions, 
being  the  sum  of  the  action  of  the  individual  cells,  prove 
there  must — it  is  impossible  to  pronounce  such  force  as  of 
tlie  same  rank  or  kind  as  the  proper  energy  of  the  cell.  It  is 
an  inferior  kind  of  power,  and  the  certain  indication  of  a  de- 
generation of  the  statical  correlative.  It  is  the  duty  of  a  cell, 
50  to  speak,  as  of  an  individual,  to  live  in  certain  relations 
with  its  surroundings — it  is,  indeed,  its  essence  as  an  individ- 
ual cell  of  specific  character ;  and,  when  it  is  not  so  living,  it 


154  THE  THEORY 

is  really  degenerating,  losing  its  nature  or  kind,  passing  more 
or  less  quickly  toward  death.  Its  action  is  certainly  not  in- 
creased functional  action.  In  truth,  it  would  be  as  just  to 
call  the  extravagant  action  of  madness  in  an  individual  occu- 
pying a  certain  position  in  a  system  of  government  increased 
functional  action,  and  to  say  that  the  government  was  stronger 
for  his  degenerate  action.  A  state,  again,  would  not  be  pow- 
erful, would  not  even  exist,  if  each  individual  did  as  his  pas- 
sions prompted,  altogether  regardless  of  his  relations  to 
others ;  and  it  would  certainly  be  a  strange  use  of  language 
to  say  then  that  the  functional  action  of  that  individual  was 
increased. 

The  phenomena  of  conscious  vitality  might  be  used  to 
illustrate  the  same  principles.  A  passionate  man  is  not 
strong-minded,  nor  do  the  ravings  of  insanity  reveal  mental 
vigor.  A  completely-fashioned  will  is  the  true  mark  of  a 
strong  mind.  "  A  character,"  said  JSTovalis,  "  is  a  completely- 
fashioned  will."  As  in  the  order  of  natural  development 
there  has  been  an  ascent  from  the  physical  and  chemical 
forces  to  the  aim- working  vital  force,  and  thence  from  the 
lowest  vitality  to  the  highest  manifestation  thereof,  so  in  the 
course  of  mental  development  there  is  a  progress  through 
sensation,  passion,  emotion,  reason,  to  the  highest  phase  of 
mental  force,  a  well-fashioned  will.  The  rightly-developed 
mind,  like  the  healthy  cell,  recognizes  its  relations  to  others  ; 
self-feeling  gives  place  to  or  expands  into  moral  feeling,  and 
in  the  will  all  the  phases  of  consciousness  are  coordinated 
into  calm,  just,  definite  action.  N'oise  and  fury  surely  indi- 
cate weakness ;  they  are  the  manifestation  of  inferior  force 
— the  tale  of  an  idiot  signifying  nothing.  The  strongest  force 
is  quiet  force,  and  the  ravings  of  insanity,  which  might  not 
unjustly  be  compared  to  the  convulsions  of  epilepsy,  do  not 
evince  mental  power. 

May  we  not,  then,  already  perceive,  what  advancing 
knowledge  must  ever  render  more  clear,  how  the  conscious 
mind  of  man  blends  in  unity  of  development  with  the  un- 


OF  VITALITY.  155 

conscious  life  of  Nature  ?  As  the  revelation  of  Nature  pro- 
ceeds in  the  progress  of  science,  the  idealism  of  Plato  and 
the  realism  of  Bacon  will  be  found  to  harmonize  as  expres- 
sions of  the  same  truths ;  the  generalizations  of  Humboldt 
and  the  poetical  intuitions  of  Goethe  may  be  looked  upon  as 
but  difterent  descriptions  of  the  same  facts.  Idealism  and  real- 
ism blend  and  are  extinguished  in  the  intimate  harmony  be- 
tween the  individual  and  Nature.  How  great,  then,  the  igno- 
rance which  fancies  that  poetry  demands  a  rude  age  for  its 
successful  development !  How  little,  again,  the  insight  which 
would  make  of  science  an  ugly  anatomy  only !  After  analysis 
comes  synthesis  ;  and,  beyond  the  practical  realization  of  sci- 
ence in  works  which  add  to  human  comfort,  there  remains 
the  ajsthetical  embodiment  of  science.  Art  has  now  opening 
before  it  a  field  so  wide  that  imagination  cannot  dare  to  limit 
it,  for  science  must  plainly  attain  to  its  highest  development 
in  the  work  of  the  future  poet,  who  shall  give  to  its  reality  a 
beautiful  form.  Goethe  indicated  the  path,  but  he  Avho  shall 
accomplish  it  will  be  a  greater  than  Goethe.* 

*  Perhaps  the  tniest  estimate  of  science,  and  the  most  remarkable 
prophecy  with  regard  to  it,  is  to  be  foand  in  that  wonderful  tale  by  Goethe, 
"Das  Mahrchen,"  a  tale  which  has  been  described,  by  one  who  has  done 
most  toward  making  Goethe  known  and  understood  in  England,  ''as  the 
deepest  poem  of  its  sort  in  existence— ai?  the  only  true  prophecy  emitted 
I'or  who  knows  how  many  centuries.'" 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  AND  PATHOLOGY 

OF 

THE    MIMB. 

By    HENRY    MAUDSLEY,   M.  i:>. 

rrice,  cloth,  $3.00, 

This  is  one  of  those  works  which  mark  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  the 
study  of  mental  science,  and  at  the  same  time  it  is.  conceded  on  all  sides  to 
be,  in  its  practical  portions,  a  most  reliable  guide  for  the  diagnosis,  descrip- 
tion, and  treatment  of  insanity. 

"To  effect  a  reconciliation  between  the  Psycholoiry  and  the  Pathology  of  the 
mind,  or  rather  to  construct  a  basis  for  both  in  a  common  science,  is  the  aim  of  Dr. 
Maudsley's  hook.'"— Lo?idan  Saturday  Heviezv,  May  25,  1867. 

"  The  first  chapter  is  devoted  to  the  consideration  of  the  causes  of  insanity.  It 
would  be  well,  we  think,  if  this  chapter  were  published  in  a  separate  form  and  scat- 
tered broadcast  throughout  the  land.  It  is  so  full  of  sensible  reflections  and  sound 
truths,  that  their  wide  dissemination  could  not  but  be  of  benefit  to  all  thinking  per- 
sons. In  taking  leave  of  Dr.  Maudsley's  volume,  we  desire  again  to  express  our 
gratification  with  the  result  of  his  labors,  and  to  express  the  hope  that  he  has  not  yet 
ceased  his  studies  in  the  important  field  which  he  has  selected.  Our  thanks  are  also 
due  to  the  American  publishers  for  the  very  handsome  manner  in  which  they  have 
reprinted  a  work  which  is  certain  to  do  credit  to  a  house  already  noted  for  its  valu- 
able publications."— ^warier/y  Journal  of  Psychological  Medicine  and  Medical  Juris- 
prudence. 

"  Then  follow  chapters  on  the  diagnosis,  prognosis,  and  treatment  of  insanity, 
each  characterized  by  the  same  bold  and  brilliant  thought,  the  same  charming  style 
of  composition,  and  the  same  sterling  sense,  that  we  have  found  all  through.  We  lay 
down  the  book  with  admiration,  and  we  commend  it  most  earnestly  to  our  readers, 
as  a  work  of  extraordinary  merit  and  originality— one  of  those  productions  that  are 
evolved  only  occasionally  in  the  lapse  ol  years,  and  that  serve  to  mark  actual  and 
very  decided  advances  in  knowledge  and  Bc\ence."—J!feiv  York  Medical  Journal, 
January,  1868. 

"  This  work  of  Dr.  Maudsley's  is  unquestionably  one  of  the  ablest  and  most  im- 
portant, on  the  subjects  of  which  it  treats,  that  has  ever  appeared,  and  does  infinite 
credit  to  his  philosophical  acumen  and  accurate  observation.  No  one  has  more  suc- 
cessfully exhibited  the  discordant  results  of  metaphysical,  physiological,  and  patho- 
logical studies  of  the  mind,  or  demonstrated  more  satisfactorily  the  usclessness  of 
ari  exclusive  method,  or  the  pressing  need  of  combined  action,  and  of  a  more  philo- 
Bophical  mode  of  proceeding."— J/ec?ica/  Record,  Xovember  15, 1867. 

"In  the  recital  of  the  causes  of  insanity,  as  found  in  peculiarities  of  civilization, 
of  religion,  sex,  condition,  and  particularly  in  the  engrossing  pursuit  of  wealth,  this 
calm  scientific  work  has  the  solemnity  of  a  hundred  sermons ;  and,  after  going  tiown 
into  this  exploration  of  the  mysteries  of  our  being,  we  shall  come  up  into  active  life 
again  chastened,  thoughtful,  and  feeling,  perhaps,  as  we  never  felt  before,  how  fear- 
fully and  wonderfully  we  are  v[12i.^q.— Evening  Gazette. 

"  It  is  long  since  we  read  a  scientific  work  of  any  kind,  of  which  the  raison  d'etre 
was  80  thoroughly  good  and  important,  or  which  accomplished  eo  much  toward  the 
fulfilment  of  a  most  arduous  and  laborious  task.'''— Lancet. 

"Dr.  Maudsley's  work,  which  has  already  become  standard,  we  most  urgently 
x'ocommend  to  the  careful  study  of  all  those  who  are  interested  In  the  physiology  and 
pathology  of  the  hraln.''— Anthropological  Revietc. 


THE  ORIGIN  OP  CIVILIZATION; 

OR,   THE 

PRIMITIVE  CONDITION  OF  MAN 
By  SIR    JOHN   LUBBOCK,  Bart.,  M.  P.,  F.  E.  S. 

3SO    rages.    Illiastrated.. 

This  interesting  work  is  the  fruit  of  many  years'  research 
by  an  accomplished  naturalist,  and  one  well  trained  in  mod- 
ern scientific  methods,  into  the  mental,  moral,  and  social  con- 
dition of  the  lowest  savage  races.  The  want  of  a  work  of 
this  kind  had  long  been  felt,  and,  as  scientific  methods  are 
being  more  and  more  applied  to  questions  of  humanity,  there 
has  been  increasing  need  of  a  careful  and  authentic  work  de- 
scribinor  the  conditions  of  those  tribes  of  men  who  are  lowest 

o 

in  the  scale  of  development. 

*'  This  interesting  work — for  it  is  intensely  so  in  its  aim,  scope,  and  the 
ability  of  its  author — treats  of  what  the  scientists  denominate  anthropology^ 
or  the  natural  history  of  the  human  species ;  the  complete  science  of  man, 
body  and  soul,  including  sex,  temperament,  race,  civilization,  etc." — Provi- 
dence Press. 

"A  work  which  is  most  comprehensive  in  its  aim,  and  most  admirable  in 
its  execution.  The  patience  and  judgment  bestowed  on  the  book  are  every- 
where apparent ;  the  mere  list  of  authorities  quoted  giving  evidence  of  wide 
and  impartial  reading.  The  work,  indeed,  is  not  only  a  valuable  one  on  ac- 
count of  the  opinions  it  expresses,  but  it  is  also  most  serviceable  as  a  book 
of  reference.  It  offers  an  able  and  exhaustive  table  of  a  vast  array  of  facts, 
which  no  single  student  could  well  obtain  for  himself,  and  it  has  not  been 
made  the  vehicle  for  any  special  pleading  on  the  part  of  the  author." — 
London  AihencBum. 

"  The  book  is  no  cursory  and  superficial  review ;  it  goes  to  the  very  heart 
of  the  subject,  and  embodies  the  results  of  all  the  later  investigations.  It  is 
replete  with  curious  and  quaint  information  presented  in  a  compact,  luminous, 
and  entertaining  form." — Albany  Evening  Journal. 

*'  The  treatment  of  the  subject  is  eminently  practical,  dealing  more  with 
fact  than  theory,  or  perhaps  it  will  be  more  just  to  say,  dealing  only  with 
theory  amply  sustained  by  fact." — Detroit  Free  Press. 

"  This  interesting  and  valuable  volume  illustrates,  to  some  extent,  the 
way  in  which  the  modern  scientific  spirit  manages  to  extract  a  considerable 
treasure  from  the  chaff  and  refuse  neglected  or  thrown  aside  by  former  in- 
quirers."— London  Saturday  Review. 

B.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  Publishers. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES, 

By  CHARLES  DARWIN. 


A  new  Americau  edition  of  "The  Origin  of  Species,"  later  than  the  latest 
English  edition,  has  just  been  published,  with  the  author's  most  recent  cor- 
rections and  additions. 

In  the  whole  history  of  the  progress  of  knowledge  there  is  no  case  so  re- 
markable of  a  system  of  doctrines,  at  first  generally  condemned  as  false  and 
absurd,  coming  into  general  acceptance  in  the  scientific  world  in  a  single 
decade.  From  the  following  statements,  the  reader  will  infer  tlic  estimate 
that  is  now  placed  upon  the  man  and  his  works  by  the  highest  authorities. 

"Pei'sonally  and  practically  exercised  in  zoology,  in  minute  anatomy,  in 
geology ;  a  student  of  geographical  distribution,  not  on  maps  and  in  museums 
only,  but  by  long  voyages  and  laborious  collection ;  having  largely  advanced 
each  of  these  branches  of  science,  and  having  spent  many  years  in  gathering 
and  sifting  materials  for  his  present  work,  the  store  of  accurately-registered 
facts  upon  which  the  author  of  the  '  Origin  of  Species'  is  able  to  draw  at 
will  is  prodigious." — Prof.  T.  H.  IIuxley. 

"  Far  abler  men  than  myself  may  confess  that  they  have  not  that  untiring 
patience  in  accumuhiting,  and  that  wonderful  skill  in  using,  large  masses  of 
facts  of  the  most  varied  kind — that  wide  and  accurate  physiological  knowl- 
edge— that  acuteness  in  devising,  that  skill  in  carrying  out  experiments,  and 
that  .admirable  style  of  composition,  at  once  clear,  persuasive,  and  judicial, 
qualities  which,  in  their  harmonious  combination,  mark  out  Mr.  Darwin  as 
the  man,  perhaps  of  all  men  now  living,  best  fitted  for  the  great  work  he 
has  undertaken  and  accomplished." — Alfred  Kussell  Wallace. 

In  Germany  these  views  are  rapidly  extending.  Prof.  Giekie,  a  distin- 
guished British  geologist,  attended  the  recent  Congress  of  German  Natural- 
ists and  Physicians,  at  Innspruck,  in  which  some  eight  hundred  savants 
were  present,  and  thus  writes : 

"What  specially  struck  me  was  the  universal  sway  which  the  writings 
of  Darwin  now  exercise  over  the  German  mind.  You  see  it  on  every  side,  in 
private  conversation,  in  printed  papers,  in  all  the  many  sections  into  which 
such  a  meeting  as  that  at  Innspruck  divides.  Darwin's  name  is  often  men- 
tioned, and  always  with  the  profoundest  veneration.  But  even  where  no  al- 
lusion is  specially  made  to  him,  nay,  even  more  markedly,  where  such  allusion 
is  absent,  we  see  how  thoroughly  his  doctrines  have  permeated  the  scientific 
mind,  even  in  those  departments  of  knowledge  which  might  seem  at  firc>t 
sight  to  be  farthest  from  natural  history.  'You  are  still  discussing  in  Eng- 
land,' said  a  German  friend  to  me,  '  whether  or  not  the  theory  of  Darwin  can 
be  true.  We  have  got  a  long  way  beyond  that  here.  His  theory  is  now  our 
common  starting-point.'  And,  so  far  as  my  experience  went,  I  found  it  to 
be  so." 

33.    ^X>I>lL.ICXON    &    CO..    Fvi-blisliers. 


D.  Appleton  &  Company''8  Pvhlications. 


LAY  seemoj:^^, 

ADDEESSES,    AND    EEYIEWS, 

By  THOMAS  HEXRY  HUXLEY. 
Cloth,  12mo.      390  pages.      Price,  $1.75 
This  is  the  latest  and  most  popular  of  tlie  works  of  this  in- 
trepid and  accomplished  English  thinker.     The  American  edition 
of  the  work  is  the  latest,  and  contains,  in  addition  to  the  English 
edition,  Professor  Huxley's  recent  masterly  address  on  "  Spon- 
taneous Generation,"  delivered  before  the  British  Association  for 
the  Advancement  of  Science,  of  which  he  was  president. 
The  following  is  from  an  able  article  in  the  Independent  : 

The  "  Lay  Sermons,  Addresses,  and  Reviews  "  is  a  book  to  be  read 
by  every  one  who  Avould  keep  up  with  the  advance  of  truth — as  well  by 
those  who  are  hostile  as  those  who  are  friendly  to  his  conclusions.  In 
it,  scientific  and  philosophical  topics  are  handled  with  consummate  abil- 
ity. It  is  remarkable  for  purity  of  style  and  power  of  expression.  No- 
where, in  any  modern  work,  is  the  advancement  of  the  pursuit  of  that 
natural  knowledge,  which  is  of  vital  importance  to  bodily  and  mental 
well-being,  so  ably  handled. 

Professor  Huxley  is  undoubtedly  the  representative  scientific  man  of 
the  age.  His  reverence  for  the  right  and  devotion  to  truth  have  estab- 
lished his  leadership  of  modern  scientific  thought.  He  leads  the  beliefs 
and  aspirations  of  the  increasingly  powerful  body  of  the  younger  men  of 
science.  His  ability  for  research  is  marvellous.  There  is  possible  no  more 
equipoise  of  judgment  than  that  to  which  he  brings  the  phenomena  of 
Nature.  Besides,  he  is  not  a  mere  scientist.  His  is  a  popularized  phi- 
losophy ;  social  questions  have  been  treated  by  his  pen  in  a  manner  most 
masterly.  In  his  popular  addresses,  embracing  the  widest  range  of  top- 
ics, he  treads  on  ground  with  which  he  seems  thoroughly  familiar. 

There  are  those  who  hold  the  name  of  Professor  Huxley  as  synony- 
mous with  irreverence  and  atheism.  Plato's  was  so  held,  and  Gahleo's, 
and  Descartes's,  and  Newton's,  and  Faraday's.  There  can  be  no  greater 
mistake.  No  man  has  greater  reverence  for  the  Bible  than  Huxley.  No 
one  more  acquaintance  with  the  text  of  Scripture.  He  believes  there  is 
definite  government  of  the  universe  ;  that  pleasures  and  pains  are  distrib- 
uted in  accordance  with  law  ;  and  that  the  certain  proportion  of  evil 
woven  up  in  the  life  even  of  worms  will  help  the  man  who  thinks  to  bear 
his  own  share  with  courage. 

In  the  estimate  of  Professor  Huxley's  future  influence  upon  science, 
his  youth  and  health  form  a  large  element.  He  has  just  passed  his  forty- 
fifth  year.  If  God  spare  his  life,  truth  can  hardly  fail  to  be  the  gainer 
from  a  mind  that  is  stored  with  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  the  Creator's 
operations,  and  that  has  learned  to  love  all  beauty  and  hate  all  vileness  of 
Nature  and  art. 


SFE^''GER8  SYSTEM  OF  PHILOSOPHY, 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EVOLUTION. 

By  HERBERT  SPENCER. 


This  great  system  of  scientiflc  thou.i^ht,  the  most  ori^'inal  and  important  men- 
tal undertaking  of  the  age,  to  which  Mr.  Spencer  has  devoted  his  life,  is  now  well 
advanced,  the  published  volumes  being:  First  Principles,  The  Principles  of  Bi- 
ology^  two  volumes,  and  Tlie  Principles  of  Psyclwlogy,  vol.  i.,  which  will  be 
shortly  printed. 

This  philosophical  system  differs  from  all  its  predecessors  in  being  solidly 
based  on  the  sciences  of  observation  and  induction ;  in  representing  the  order 
and  course  of  Nature  ;  in  bringing  Nature  and  man,  life,  mind,  and  society,  under 
one  great  law  of  action  ;  and  in  developing  a  method  of  thought  which  may  serve 
for  practical  guidance  in  dealing  with  the  affairs  of  life.  That  Mr.  Spencer  is  the 
man  for  this  great  work  will  be  evident  from  the  following  statements : 

"  The  only  complete  and  systematic  statement  of  the  doctrine  of  Evolution 
with  which  I  am  acquainted  is  that  contained  in  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  '  System 
of  Philosophy ; '  a  work  which  should  be  carefully  studied  by  all  who  desire  to 
know  whither  scientific  thought  is  tending."— T.  n.  Huxlet. 

"  Of  all  our  thinkers,  he  is  the  one  who  has  formed  to  himself  the  largest  new 
scheme  of  a  systematic  philosophy."— Prof.  Masson. 

"  If  any  individual  influence  is  visibly  encroaching  on  Mills  in  this  country,  it 
is  bis." — Ibid. 

"  Mr.  Spencer  is  one  of  the  most  vigorous  as  well  as  boldest  thinkers  that 
English  speculation  has  yet  produced." — John  Sttjart  Mill. 

''  One  of  the  acutest  metaphysicians  of  modern  times." — Ibid. 

"  One  of  our  deepest  thinkers."— Dr.  Joseph  D.  Hooker. 

It  is  questionable  if  any  thinker  of  fi.ner  calibre  has  appeared  in  our  coun- 
try."—George  Henry  Lewes. 

"He  alone,  of  all  British  thinkers,  has  organized  a  philosophy."— TJ/cZ. 

"  He  is  as  keen  an  analyst  as  is  known  in  the  history  of  philosophy ;  I  do  not 
except  either  Aristotle  or  Kant."— George  Kiplet. 

"If  we  were  to  give  our  own  judgment,  we  should  say  that,  since  Newton, 
there  has  not  in  England  been  a  philosopher  of  more  remarkable  speculative  and 
systematizing  talent  than  (in  spite  of  some  errors  and  some  narrowness)  Mr.  Her- 
bert Spencer."— Zoftc?on  Saturday  Review. 

"  We  cannot  refrain  from  offering  our  tribute  of  respect  to  one  who,  whether 
for  the  extent  of  his  positive  knowledge,  or  for  the  profundity  of  his  speculative 
Insight,  has  already  achieved  a  name  second  to  none  in  the  whole  range  of  Eng- 
lish philosophy,  and  whose  works  will  worthily  sustain  the  credit  of  English 
thought  in  the  present  generation,"— Fes^/nzn^^^r  Revieic. 


Works  of  Herbert  Sjoencer  published  by  D.  Appleton  <&  Co. 
The  JPMJosoj)hy  of  Herbert  Spencer, 


FIRST    PRINCIPLES; 

IN  TWO  FAMTS: 

l  THE  UNKNOWABLE.    II  LAWS  OF  THE  KNOWABLE, 

In  one  Volume.    518  pages. 


"Mr.  Spencer  has  earned  an  eminent  and  commanding  position  as  a  metaphysioian, 
ftui  his  ability,  earnestness,  and  profundity,  are  in  none  of  his  former  volimies  so  oon- 
Bp««uous  as  in  this.  There  is  not  a  crude  thought,  a  flippant  fling,  or  an  irreverent  in- 
6in.iation  in  this  book,  notwithstanding  that  it  has  something  of  the  character  of  a 
daring  and  determined  raid  upon  the  old  philosophies." — Chicago  Journal. 

"  This  volume,  treating  of  First  Principles,  like  all  Mr.  Spencer''s  •writings  that  have 
fallen  imder  our  observation,  is  distinguished  for  clearness,  earnestness,  candor,  and 
that  originality  and  fearlessness  which  ever  mark  the  true  philosophical  spirit.  Hia 
treatment  of  theological  opinions  is  reverent  and  respectful,  and  his  suggestions  and 
arguments  are  such  as  to  deserve,  as  they  will  compel,  the  earnest  attention  of  all 
thoughtful  students  of  first  truths.  Agreeing  with  Hamilton  and  Mansel  in  the  gene- 
ral, on  the  unknowableness  of  the  unconditioned,  he  nevertheless  holds  that  their  being 
ia  in  a  form  asserted  by  consciousness." — Christian  Advocate. 

'•  The  literary  world  has  seen  but  few  such  authors  as  Kerbert  Spencer.  There  hava 
been  metaphysical  writers  in  the  same  exalted  sphere  who  before  him  have  attempted 
to  reduce  the  laws  of  nature  to  a  rational  system.  But  in  the  highest  realm  of  philo- 
Bophical  investigation  he  stands  head  and  shoulders  above  his  predecessors ;  not  perhaps 
purely  by  force  of  superior  intellect,  but  partly  owing  to  the  greater  aid  which  the 
light  of  modern  science  has  afi'orded  him  in  the  prosecution  of  his  difficult  task."— 
Boston  Bulletin. 

"Mr.  Spencer  is  achieving  an  enviable  distinction  by  his  contributions  to  the  coun- 
try's literature ;  bis  system  of  philosophy  is  destined  to  become  a  work  of  no  small 
renown.  Its  appearance  at  this  time  is  an  evidence  that  oiu*  people  are  not  all  absorbed 
la  war  and  its  tragic  events."— <97a'o  State  Journal. 

"  Mr.  Spencer's  works  will  undoubtedly  receive  in  this  country  the  attention  thoy 
nimt.  There  is  a  broad  liberality  of  tone  throughout  which  will  recommend  them  to 
ihlnking,  mquiring  Americans.  Whether,  as  is  asserted,  he  has  established  a  new  sya- 
tsm  of  philosoBhy,  and  if  so,  whether  that  system  is  better  than  all  other  systems,  ia 
70t  to  bo  decided ;  but  that  his  bold  and  vigorous  thought  will  add  something  valuabl* 
fad  permanent  to  human  knowledge  is  undeniable." — Utica  Herald. 

"Herbert  Spencer  is  the  foremost  among  living  thinkers.  If  lees  erudite  thai 
Hamilton,  ho  is  quite  as  original,  and  Is  mora  comprehens'vo  and  catholic  than  Mas 
BcL"—  rniversalul). 


Works  publkJied  bu  R  Applcton  <k  Co. 


THE  CORRELATION  AKD  CONSERVATION 


FORCES. 


SERIES    OF  EXPOSITIONS    BY   GROVE,   MAYER,   HELMHOLTZ, 
FAEADAY,   LIEBIG,   AND  CARPENTER. 


AN    INTRODUCTION. 

BT  E.  L.   YOUMAIirS 


The  work  embraces : 

I.— THE  CORRELATIOK   OF  PHYSICAL  FORCES.      By 
W.  R.  Geove.     (The  complete  Avork.) 

II.— CELESTIAL  DYNAMICS.     By  De.  J.  R.  Mates. 

ni.— THE  INTERACTION  OF  FORCES.     By  Peof.  Helm- 

nOLTZ. 

IV. —  THE    CONNECTION    AND    EQUIVALENCE    OB 
FORCES.    By  Peof.  Liebig. 

v.— ON    THE    CONSERVATION    OF   FORCE.      Br  Dr. 
Faeaday. 

71.— ON  THE  CORRELATION  OF  PHYSICAL  AND  VI 
TAL  FORCES.    By  Dr.  Carpenteb. 


Works  publUJied  by  D.  Appkton  db  Co. 


HEAT, 

COXSIDEPvED    AS    A    MODE    OF    MOTION, 

Being  a  Course  of  Twelve  Lectures  delivered    before  tho 
Royal  Institution  of  Great  Britain. 

BY  JOHN  TYimALL,  F.  E.  S., 

PK0FE8S0B    or   NATXHIAL    PHtLOSOPHT  IN   THE    EOTAL   INSTTniTION— AUTHOB    0»    UU 
"GLACrEES  OF  THE  ALPS,"  ETC. 

With  One  Hundred  Illustrations.     8vo,  480  pages.    Price,  $2. 


From  the  American  Journal  of  Science.— "With  all  the  skill  which  haa 
made  Faraday  the  master  of  experimental  science  in  Great  Britain,  Professor  Tyndall 
enjoys  the  advantage  of  a  superior  general  culture,  and  is  thus  enabled  to  set  forth  his 
philosophy  with  all  the  graces  of  eloquence  and  the  finish  of  superior  diction.  "With  a 
simplicity,  and  absence  of  technicalities,  which  render  his  explanations  lucid  to  un- 
scientific  minds,  and  at  the  same  time  a  thoroughness  and  originality  by  which  he  in- 
Btructs  the  most  learned,  he  unfolds  all  the  modem  philosophy  of  heat.  His  work  takes 
rank  at  once  as  a  classic  upon  the  subject 

New  York  Times.— Professor  Tyndall's  course  of  lectures  on  heat  is  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  illustrations  of  a  mode  of  handling  scientific  subjects,  which  is  com- 
paratively new,  and  which  promises  the  best  results,  both  to  science  and  to  literature 
generally ;  we  mean  tke  treatment  of  subjects  in  a  style  at  once  ^ro/bwnc?  and  popu- 
lar. The  title  of  Professor  Tyndall's  work  indicates  the  theory  of  heat  held  by  him, 
and  indeed  the  only  one  now  held  by  scientific  men — it  is  a  mode  of  motion. 

Boston  Journal. — He  exhibits  the  curious  and  beautiful  workings  of  nature  iu 
a  most  delightful  manner.  Before  the  reader  particles  of  water  lock  themselves  or  fly 
asunder  with  a  movement  regulated  like  a  dance.  They  form  themselves  into  liquid 
flowers  with  fine  serrated  petals,  or  into  rosettes  of  frozen  gauze ;  they  bound  upward 
In  boiling  fountains,  or  creep  slowly  onward  in  stupendous  glaciers.  Flames  burst  into 
music  and  sing,  or  cease  to  sing,  as  the  experimenter  pleases,  and  metals  paint  them- 
selves upon  a  screen  in  dazzling  hues  as  the  painter  touches  his  canvas. 

New  York  Tribune.— The  most  original  and  important  contribution  that  ha« 
yet  been  made  to  the  theory  and  lileratm^e  of  thermotics. 

Scientific  American. — The  work  Is  written  in  a  charming  style,  and  Is  the 
most  valuable  contribution  to  scientific  literature  that  bia  been  published  In  many 
ye^rs.  It  is  the  most  popular  exposition  of  the  dynamical  theory  of  heat  that  has  yet 
appeared.    The  old  material  theory  of  heat  may  be  said  to  be  defunct. 

ZiOuisville  Democrat.— This  is  one  of  the  most  delightful  Bcientiflc  works  we 
heve  ever  met.  The  lectures  are  so  full  of  life  and  spirit  that  we  can  almost  imagic* 
the  lecturer  before  us,  and  see  his  brilliant  experiments  in  every  stage  of  their  progress. 
The  theory  is  so  carefully  and  thoroughly  explained  that  no  one  can  fail  to  understani 
It.    Buch  books  as  these  create  a  love  for  science. 

Independent. — Professor  Tyndall's  expositions  and  experiments  are  remarkably 
thoughtful,  ingenious,  clear,  and  convincing ;  portions  of  tho  book  have  almost  tl>« 
Interest  of  a  romance,  so  startlins  are  the  descriptions  and  elucidations. 


"  One  of  the  most  accomplished  Writers  of  the  Age." 
HISTORY 

OF  THE 

EISE  AKD  INFLUENCE 

OF  THE   SPIRIT   OF 

RATIONALISM  IN  EUROPE. 

By    -W.   E.    H.    LECIvY.    IVI.  A. 
2  Vols,  small  8vo.    Cloth,  $4. 


[From  the  Eclinlurgh  Eecieic] 

"  "We  open&d  these  volumes,  never  having  heard  the  name  of  their  author,  and 
entirely  Ignorant  of  his  pretensions  to  a  place  in  English  literature.  "Wo  closed 
them  with  the  conviction  that  Mr.  Lecky  is  one  of  the  most  accomplished  writers 
and  one  of  the  most  ingenious  thinkers  of  the  time,  and  that  his  book  deserves 
the  highest  commendation  we  can  bestow  upon  it.  Indeed,  it  has  seldom  been 
our  good  fortune  to  take  up  an  essay  by  an  unknown,  and  we  presume,  a  young 
author,  so  remarkable  for  the  purity  and  elegance  of  its  style,  so  replete  -with 
varied  erudition,  appropriately  introduced  to  enliven  argument,  or  so  distinguished 
for  broad  and  dispassionate  views.  ******  This  book  well  deserves  to  be 
universally  read  and  carefully  studied,  for  if  the  eye  is  dazzled  at  first  by  the  bril- 
liancy of  the  fervor,  the  mind  is  interested  and  occupied  by  the  subtlety  and  per- 
Bpicuity  of  a  thousand  observations  which  escape  notice  on  a  first  perusal.  In  a 
word,  we  hope  to  see  this  work  take  its  place  among  the  best  literary  productions 
of  the  age,  and  we  doubt  not  that  it  will  powerfully  conduce  to  the  ultimate  tri- 
umph of  that  cause  to  which  it  is  devoted." 

D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  Publishers, 

80,  82  &  94  Gbakd  Street,  New  Youk. 


D.  APPLET  ON  et  CO:S  PUBLICATIONS 


THE  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  MAN; 

DESIGNED  TO 

EEPEESENT  THE  EXISTING  STATE  OF  PHYSIOLOGICAL  SCIENOB, 
AS  APPLIED  TO  THE  FUNCTIONS  OF  THE  HUMAN  BODY. 

By    ^TJSTIN     injL,IN"T,    Jr.,    l^t.  33. 

Alimentation;   Digestion;  Absorption;   Lympli  and   Ohyl©. 
1  volume,  8vo.     Cloth.     Price,  $4.50. 


THE   FIRST  VOLUME   OF  THE  SERIES 

BY 
CONTAINING 

Introduction;    The    Blood;    The    Circnlation;    Eespiration. 
1  volume,  8vo.     Cloth.     Price,  S4.50. 


"  Profcsf5or  Flint  is  engaged  in  the  preparation  of  an  extended 
work  on  liuman  physiology,  in  which  he  professes  to  consider  all  the 
subjects  usually  regarded  as  belonging  to  that  department  of  phys- 
ical science.  The  work  will  be  divided  into  separate  and  distinct 
parts,  but  the  several  volumes  in  which  it  is  to  be  published  will  form 
a  connected  series." — Providence  Journal. 

It  is  free  from  technicalities  and  purely  professional  terms,  and 
instead  of  only  being  adapted  to  the  use  of  the  medical  faculty, 
will  be  found  of  interest  to  the  general  reader  who  desires  clear 
and  concise  information  on  the  subject  of  man  physical." — Eoenmg 
Post. 

"  Digestion  is  too  little  understood,  indigestion  too  extensively 
suffered,  to  render  this  a  work  of  supererogation.  Stomachs  will  have 
their  revenge,  sooner  or  later,  if  Nature's  laws  are  infringed  upon 
through  ignorance  or  stubbornness,  and  it  is  well  that  all  should  un- 
derstand how  the  penalty  for  'high  living'  is  assessed." — Chicago 
Evening  Journal. 

"A  year  has  elapsed  since  Dr.  Flint  published  the  first  part  of 
bis  great  work  upon  human  physiology.  It  was  an  admirable  treatise 
—distinct  in  itself — exhausting  the  special  subjects  upon  which  it 
vr ca tod . ' ' — Ph iladelph i^  Inq uirer. 


*'A  BOOK  WHICH  IS  A3  READABLE  AS  A  NOVEL: 


HISTORY  OF  EUEOPEAN  MORALS, 

Fro^n   Atigustus   to    Charlemagne, 

By  W.  E.  n.  LECXY,  M.  A. 
2  vols.,  8vo.     500  pages  each.     Price,  $0.00. 


CONTENTS  : 

The  Utilitarian  School— Objections  to  the  School— Consequence  of  actini' 
on  Utilitarian  Principles— Utilitarian  Sanctions— Intuitive  School— Alleged 
Diversities  of  Moral  Judgment— Each  of  the  Two  Schools  of  Morals  relared 
to  the  General  Condition  of  Society— The  Order  in  which  Moral  Feelings 
are  developed. 

THE  PAGAN  EMPIRE. 

Stoicism— Growth  of  a  Gentler  and  more  Cosmopolitan  Spirit  In  Rome- 
Rise  of  Eclectic  Moralists— The  People  still  very  corrupt— Causes  of  the 
Corruption— Effects  of  Stoicism  on  the  Corruption  of  Society— Passion  for 
Oriental  Religiona—Neoplatonism. 

THE  CONVERSION  OP  ROME. 

Examination  of  the  Theory  which  ascribes  part  of  the  Teaching  of  the 
Hated  Pagan  Moralists  to  Christian  Influence— Theory  whicli  attributes  the 
Conversion  of  the  Empire  to  the  Evidence  of  Miracles— The  Persecution  the 
Church  underwent  not  of  a  Nature  to  crush  it— History  of  the  Persecutions. 

FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE. 

First  Consequence  of  Christianity,  a  New  Sense  of  the  Sanctity  of  Hu- 
man Life— The  Second  Consequence  of  Christianity,  to  teach  Lniverpal 
Brotherhood— Two  Qualifications  of  our  Admiration  of  the  Charity  of  the 
Church— The  Growth  of  Asceticism— The  Saints  of  the  Desert— Decline  ol 
the  Civic  Virtues— General  Moral  Condition  of  the  Byzantine  Empire— Dis- 
tinctive Excellences  of  the  Ascetic  Period— Monachism— Relation  of  Mona- 
chism  to  the  Intellectual  Virtues- The  Monasteries  the  Receptacles  of 
Learn  in  2;— Moral  Condition  of  Western  Europe— Growth  of  a  Military  and 
Aristocratic  Spirit— Consecration  of  Secular  Rank. 

THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN. 

The  Courtesans— Roman  Public  Opinion  much  purer— Christian  Influ- 
ence—Relation of  Christianity  to  the  Female  Virtues. 

D.  APPLETCN  &  CO.,  Publishers, 

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AMERICAN   CYCLOFiEOIA 


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HATE  NOW  UEADT    THE 

NEW    AMERICAN    CYCLOPAEDIA, 

A  POPULAR  DICTIONARY  OF  GMERAL  KNOWLEDGE. 

EDITED    BY 
GEORGE  RIPLEY  and  CHARLES  A.  DANA, 

AIDED   BY   A 

ICiimcrous  Select  Corps  of  Writers  In  all  Bruuchcs  of  Solenee^   Art* 
and  Literature, 

TN  16  L^Ti&E  VOLXJiMES,  8vo, 
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From  the  New  York  Times. 


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